A Series of Unfortunate Texts
by AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: Dean knows his wife is having an affair, he just doesn't know with who - and when he finds out, it's worse than he thought. Destiel Slash AU.
1. Chapter 1

Dean knows she's having an affair; the question is, with who?

Could be Greg at the yoga studio, Tom from down the street (because he does stare at Lisa when she's gardening, don't think he hasn't seen it) or it could be Sam. His fucking brother Sam who Lisa always says is so 'nice' and 'of course he should come down the holidays'.

Dean is so fucked up.

He hates this, hates thinking about it and feeling jealous and the caveman bullshit that's driving him nuts. But he knows Lisa is cheating on him, he's found the texts on her phone 'contact unlisted' all about meetings and hotels. They're not exactly sexy but then, Lisa's smart – deniability is probably something she'd aim for. Then there's the scent of unfamiliar aftershave that clings to the clothes she dumps in the laundry basket, too deeply ingrained to be anything other than full contact with some other mans naked skin. She's picked up a few tricks too, Lisa, bendy and amazing as she is, used to give pretty lacklustre head. Not that he minded, it's not the kind of thing that's a deal breaker – he just didn't ask for it, and she only volunteered when she felt she should.

She'd gotten good at it, great even.

Dean wondered where the hell that had come from.

And it puts a kind of damper on anyone's marriage when they can't kiss their wife, because all they can think of is some other man's dick in her mouth.

So he keeps checking her phone. Ignored the occasional looks she gives him in the evenings when they're cocooned on the sofa, watching the news. The looks that say 'what are you thinking about? Why do you keep moving away from me?' She actually looks hurt. Sometimes he wonders if it's all in his mind.

Then the text comes through, he reads it and deletes it without letting Lisa see it. Then he hides her phone out in the garage. Because this text isn't something obscure like 'the hotel with the green awning, 6 will be waiting room 16'. It's an apartment address in their town.

Dean has a few options here, he could have let Lisa read the text, then followed her. He could go to the apartment and check out who lives there. Or he could go for the knee jerk reaction – find the apartment and beat the hell out of the other guy.

Mature? Sane? Probably not. But more than anything Dean wants it to be a mistake, all in his mind. So when he gets there, and sees that his wife has been lying to him for months and sleeping around, worse – that it's an actual relationship? He isn't going to be able to hold off, he knows that.

He drives across town wishing that he wasn't 'that guy' the one who didn't just man up and ask his wife what was wrong. No, he's the guy who'll deny everything and push it down until he can't hide from it anymore – he has to find out what's been going on, has to make himself believe it.

The apartment building is moderately expensive, clean and modern with an entry phone and lots of chrome and exposed brick. Dean pulls up and buzzes the right apartment. A man's voice, deep and polite comes over the intercom.

"Hello?"

Dean hasn't really thought this through, what does he say? 'Hi, are you screwing my wife? Mind buzzing me in?' He closes his eyes and swallows, playing for time as he works something out.

"Yeah...Hi, I guess I'm here to see you." He flinches at how lame that sounds. "I want to..."

The door buzzes open.

"It's alright. Come on up." The voice is pleasant, and perhaps slightly amused which does not do wonders for Dean's mood. So he's rich, for one, and amused by guys like Dean. Great.

He mounts the stairs and reaches the apartment door as it opens. The guy leans out, catches sight of him and breaks into a small, easy, smile. Dean isn't sure what he was expecting, but this guy is almost his exact opposite. Dark haired, pale and lean, resting gracefully against the doorframe and regarding him with pleased, speculative, blue eyes.

"So...you want to come in?" his voice really is as deep as it seemed over the intercom, weirdly so coming out of such a small dude. Dean looks him over, because this is the man his wife has been sleeping with.

He can't judge himself against this stranger, can't quite work out if he's more or less attractive, or mannered or whatever the hell reasons he can think of for a woman to cheat on him.

"Yeah" he follows the guys slim, retreating back into the apartment. "You don't seem surprised that I'm here." Dean says, finally, as they reach the living room, there's a huge L shaped couch dominating the space and the other man gestures for him to sit.

"Should I be?" his manner is still easy, formal but not guarded, like he couldn't lie if he tried. Dean hates it, but then, maybe he has no idea that Lisa is married. Maybe he doesn't even know her name. He seems to catch Dean's assumption that he _should _be surprised and shrugs.

"I was expecting someone else...a mix-up on my part." He settles onto the couch easily, jean clad legs falling carelessly open, pale hands resting in his lap.

Neither of them speak.

"You seem nervous." He says eventually, smiling and leaning forwards, arms resting on his knees.

"I'm not...I'm not even sure why I'm here." It comes out gruffer than he intended, less confrontational, more hopeless. "so how can I be nervous?"

"Well you must know why you're here...what is it you want to ask me?" his head tilts, exposing the side of his neck, pale and uniformly soft, pulse fluttering. Dean teeters on the edge, not wanting to ask – not wanting to know. Wishing he could go back home to his two bedroom house and listen to one of Lisa's work stories, curled against her side in the warmth of their bed.

He can't, it would kill him to leave now.

He's about to speak when the other man's eyes narrow, lids lowering with shyness.

"Or...I'm sorry, usually I..." he looks up at Dean then, mouth twisting with self deprecating awkwardness. "I tend to negotiate...terms...upfront." Composure slips back into place.

Dean officially doesn't get this guy.

"You mean..." he has no idea how to finish that sentence, but fortunately the man sitting next to him takes it as a prompt.

"Payment" he inclines his head delicately.

"For..."

The other mans eyes narrow as if he senses that they're not having the same conversation – finally. He leans back on the sofa, a politely confused look gracing his features.

"Who are you, exactly?" he asks, curiously.

"I'm...Lisa's husband." Dean stresses carefully. "I came here..." he breaks off and starts again with more strength in his voice. "Look, I know you've been texting my wife, and, meeting her in hotels and today she was meant to come here." He gestures at the blue walls that surround them. "so I came here to find out..."

"Oh God." The other man seems genuinely aggrieved, looking down at the floor and his own bare feet.

"...Find out that my wife's been having an affair." Dean feels like the air's pull of atomised metal or glass, making his chest ache and chafing his insides raw. "Did you know about me or did she never mention..."

"My clients don't tend to tell me much about themselves." The man looks at him cautiously, sadness warring with anxiousness on his face.

"Clients." Dean repeats, dumbly. And the gritty air inside of him turns to dirty ice and crusted blood, welling a bad taste into his mouth. Because he was expecting the worst, and this was not it, the bottom falls out of his nightmare and he realises how much more he had to lose.

"I..." The guy looks suddenly frozen with realisation and what's worse...pity. "Mr..." he realises he doesn't know his name, falters and then proceeds anyway. "I'm sorry for what you're going through...my relationship with your, wife...was a professional one, a transaction." He almost winces as he says, "I'm an escort."

Dean is motionless for about a minute and a half.

The other man watches him with wide, watchful eyes.

"You're a hooker." Dean finally says, blankly, looking at him sharply as soon as the words have left his mouth.

"I prefer...yes. Yes I am." He sighs. "I apologise for the tactlessness, I thought..."

"You thought I was a 'client'" Dean can barely keep the disgust out of his voice. Lisa has paid this man for sex."So you do guys? That a minus of this...arrangement?" he feels empty, his head throbs with anger and pain and right now he just needs something, someone to hurt.

"I don't actually mind." The smaller man's eyes are still understanding, but his tone carries his coolness.

"Great, so my wife buys sex from you...and you're not even hot for women." Dean can feel rage fogging his brain, making his temples ache with frustration.

"Look...I know this isn't the easiest situation...but this isn't really a conversation you need to have with me." His voice is annoyingly firm and calm. He has a point, Dean has to admit, Lisa paid him for whatever he did – it's not like he chose her or wanted her. It was just his job.

Another thought hits him – one he really wishes he hadn't had.

"What did she want you to do?"

The other man's face closes down.

"I don't think...I really don't think that would be productive."

"Screw productive!" Dean suddenly shouts, startling the other man and making him jump nervously. "I want...I need" his voice turns pensive again. "I have to know."

"It won't help." The guy says softly.

"I know...but I need to..." Dean is stuck, he can't explain it, so he just looks the other man in the eye, trying to communicate the misery he feels.

"I..." He swallows, looking down at his hands. "It was just...just straight sex. Nothing unusual...and some advice on...uh...technique." a slight flush creeps up his neck and Dean wonders numbly what kind of prostitute blushes.

"On?" his voice is strained.

"Oral sex." It's almost an apology. "There was no...she didn't participate, I told her a few...tricks." The flush deepens, his brows draw together and he looks helplessly pained on Dean's behalf.

And he can't...he just can't. There's nothing to think that won't hurt. That Lisa, paid some stranger to fuck her, and then picked up tricks. Tricks to take home to her husband, why? To make her feel better about it?

"Because you blow guys." Dean closes his eyes, of course this guy would know more than any chick. "How much?" he hears himself ask, numbly.

The other man's head shoots up, looking at him carefully.

"I don't think..."

"How. Much?" he grates out. He feels bad, so so bad, and right now he just wants to feel out of it, he can't even call it feeling good. He wants to feel...nothing.

"I don't think" the other man, the whore, continues doggedly. "that would improve your feelings."

" I know...but I want..." he can't articulate it, doesn't want to try. "You need the money or not?"

The other man blinks sadly, ducks his head, eyes firmly shut against his own opinions. "Fifty."

Dean huffs with humourless laughter, but takes out his wallet and deposits notes on the couch between them. The other man takes them and folds them slowly, slipping them into the pocket of his jeans.

There's a pause of thirty second and Dean can feel his heart beating painfully, his body contracting with pain and despair.

"Blow me." He says. The other man dips his head in understanding and drops to the floor in front of him, kneeling on the carpet. Dean closes his eyes when he feels hands going to work on his fly. He doesn't want to see, or even feel. He already wants this over and done, something else to regret.

Warm breath hits his exposed skin, dick still soft, not that he expected otherwise. Damp, plush lips move over him and he feels himself stirring at the contact. By the time the other man's sucking lightly at his head, he's almost fully hard, pushing reluctantly into the contact. Loose open mouthed kisses are pressed over his balls, harsh, excited breath rumpling the crisp hair. Dean lets out an involuntary mumble of appreciation.

The slow, exploratory touches become more of a constant pressure. The man on his knees encircles Dean's shaft with one hand, sucking the tip and running his tongue over the slit and the thick vein that Dean is personally acquainted with himself. With one quick movement he withdraws his hand and takes Dean in as far as possible, tongue swirling on the way down. Dean makes a strangled sound, heat and slick tightness and the pressing weight of the whore's tongue overloading him for a second. The guy bobs his head up and down, unsurprisingly moving like a pro. Dean recognises the technique as Lisa's new approach.

It's almost the same sensation, a little more practiced but still similar enough to blur together with her in his mind. He's losing himself to bitterness, forgetting where he is and remembering Lisa and what she's done.

And then the guy moans.

The rough, wrecked sound breaks Dean from his thoughts and he opens his eyes, looking down at the dark head still intently bobbing on his cock. The man moans again on the down stroke and Dean can feel his tongue sweeping at his head, tasting pre-come and coming back for more. He shifts from his place, thrown back on the couch, raising himself enough to look at the guy's face.

His eyes are tightly shut, squeezed closed not at the strain of the motion, as he finds Lisa sometimes looks, but instead with guilty pleasure. Strong hands grip Dean's thighs, urging him up, closer. Another wordless, animal groan of pleasure wracks the throat of the man kneeling before him. His eyes flicker open a little, taking a second to focus on Dean's flushed, intent face. Blue eyes turn slightly worried for a second, as if he's suddenly remembered that this is one sided deal – that Dean is paying for a service and not doing him a massive favour by shoving his cock down his throat.

Dean lays a hand on his dark hair, soft and untidy, gently pushing him further down onto his erection, hips bucking up as he watches the whore's lips stretch around him. His eyes flick closed as he goes back to sucking, cheeks hollowing and he moans around the weight of him, soft keening noises and greedy, thick moans that catch his throat.

Dean can't tear his eyes away.

The whores hand fumbles with the front of his jeans, tugging the fly open and fisting around his own painfully swollen cock. The sounds that make his mouth and throat thrum around Dean's dick increase in volume and frequency. Hungry, desperate noises that burn along Dean's nerves, because there is a man on his knees, getting off on having him in his mouth. Almost chocking on his dick in eagerness. They grow increasingly desperate, Dean adding his own 'Fuck...fuck...yeah, god..." in a steady litany as they both crash into their orgasms, Dean coming first and hard down the other guys throat. The whore swallows around him, still sucking for all he's worth as his hand moves over himself in a blur, finally spilling onto the carpet with an agonised sound. He curls in on himself, sheltering his groin as he pulses over his fist.

He sucks Dean lazily, pulling off when Dean emits a soft noise at the stimulation of his sensitive dick. He presses his nose to the dark hair there instead, inhaling shakily and making a wretched sound in the back of his throat. Dean can only shake, body and mind still lost and only aware that someone is lavishing attention on him, tender and soft as he comes down.

"...uh..." the sound falls from the whore's lips, body trembling as he presses his mouth to the skin beside the root of Dean's spent cock. Dean pets his hair, feeling the soft nudging of the other man's head against his palm.

This is intimate, wrong on levels beyond levels. But Dean can't pull away. He's lost his wife, his perfect, beautiful wife. And the only thing that's made him feel good in months is a whore who's sucked him down for fifty bucks.

And loved every second of it.

The man pulls away after a while, sitting back on his heels and rubbing the back of his hand across his reddened mouth.

Dean straightens up, the guy refuses to look him in the eye, instead he busies himself with fastening his jeans, then straightening and going to sit back on the couch. Dean notices that he makes no move to wash his mouth out.

"I take it I should...go." Dean hears himself say. The guy looks up, looking for the first time like he isn't sure, not just mildly confused but downright uncertain.

"...I...yes." he says. He gets up and goes to the door, laying his hands on it. "I'm sorry...about how this has gone..."

"Don't. It's not...it's really not your fault." Dean steps through the opened door, looking back the man and feeling awkward, somehow regretting what they've done, for the wrong reasons. "Thank you...for...it was good."

"Good" he says, smiling slightly, then, without meaning to. "what's your name?" he never usually asks things of his clients.

"Dean." Dean says, feeling the weight in his chest decrease a little. "Winchester." He adds, because being just Dean would make him like any one of the John's this guy must see. He wants to be different, not just a client but the guy who came to find out about his wife, who came for a reason other than sex.

"I'm Castiel." He realises this must sound like a fake name. "Usually I introduce myself as James, it's my middle name. But I'm Castiel. Novak."

Dean likes the fact that he gets this guys real name. He likes him more than he should like someone who's slept with his wife and then blown him for a handful of bills.

"Hi Castiel."

"Hello Dean."

They shake hands over the threshold as if meeting for the first time.


	2. Chapter 2

"Dean? Sweetie, you home?"

Dean looks towards the living room door. It's past five and it's gotten dark out, the room is absently dark, lacking a light to show his presence, not because he thought it would be a good idea to sit in the dark, but because he didn't notice the shadows creeping in.

He's taken a shower, hair drying flat and untidy. He no longer smells like unfamiliar cologne and sweat. He feels tired, would give a lot not to have to do this now – but he has to.

Lisa opens the door.

"Oh hi" she smiles, setting down her purse.

"Yeah, Hi." He can't think of a better way to broach it so he goes for. "So I met James today." He's gambling that Castiel would have used his work name on Lisa. He's right. She looks up at him, eyes widening with shock, body bristling with fight-or-ask forgiveness impulse.

"Oh...baby..." her voice is soft and he can't take this. His wife has paid another man for sex (for reasons that he really really doesn't want to know, his pride couldn't take it) and now she's shushing him softly and acting like he's upset. Dean isn't upset – humiliated, angry, betrayed, desperate – but not upset.

"So...when did that start?" he looks down at the half empty beer on the table. His first and only beer because he figured he didn't want to be drunk for this.

"Dean" still quiet she comes to sit beside him, and he thought he'd be disgusted by her – his Lisa, fucking a whore, but she's still the same, beautiful and sweet and calm. He wishes he could feel nausea, anger at her touch. He can't.

"How did you even meet him?"

"I...a woman at the studio uses his agency." Her voice is slow and deliberately calm. "Dean I'm sorry I..."

"You _paid _him, Lisa" Dean lets the words drop heavily. "If you'd found someone else or you wanted...I don't know, I'd still be..." Pissed, hurt, stunned, angry. "but you _paid _him." Lisa closes her eyes and tilts her head downwards. He wants her to defend it or explain it, but she's just silent.

"He's gay, did you know that?" She looks at him then.

"How do you know that?"

"I went to see him." Her eyes go wide and she looks slightly afraid, worried. Dean remembers why he went to see Castiel and realises where her mind must have gone.

"Not to...I didn't do anything, ok? I just wanted to know...who it was that you were seeing."

"Dean, I didn't want you to find out like this..."

"Or at all, right?"

"No, no I didn't want you to know." She clenches her hands around her trailing shirt hem. "It was just something I needed, for myself."

"Sex. You just needed sex." Dean states numbly. He doesn't want to hear this, whatever his shortcomings are he doesn't need them on top of everything else today.

"Not just..." she breaks off. "We've grown up, you know? We're not...we don't do the things we used to. Go out, get drunk and just do it, on a back road somewhere." She frowns. "I know this is what I wanted, getting married, the house...but I still want that, sometimes." Her hand touches his. "I want _you._"

"Well...I'm moving out." Dean feels his chest lock tight, knows he won't be feeling anything from now on. "Do whatever you want."

"No" as Dean stands up and goes towards the stairs, to pack, to leave, Lisa goes after him. "Dean...I'm sorry, I didn't mean...I just want us to be ok, please?" Dean looks around their bedroom, at all the things they've put there, this little suburban nightmare. He's forgotten what it was like, living in an apartment, his music blaring over the radio and no one to complain about his taste. It's like waking up, realising he can go back to that, to being Dean Winchester – single and damn pleased to be so.

That night when he leaves he leaves behind another version of himself, starched shirt under a sweater and neat haired – informed on the neighbourhood watch and property values. The Dean Winchester who was happily married isn't around anymore.

The Dean Winchester who was happy.

He doesn't really have anywhere to go, his friends are all Lisa's friends as well. But he knows the motels around the place well enough to find somewhere to sleep. Or not sleep as the case may be. He can't really imagine resting right now, he feels too much to let go of wakefulness.

So he's going to get a divorce – he can't really see being married to Lisa anymore, even though he still loves her, he can't look at her without thinking of Castiel, of what she's paid him to do.

What Dean has paid him to do.

He feels...not bad about it, his marriage was over before he paid a stranger to blow him. But he feels weird, like there was more to it, something about their meeting that wasn't finished when he found out the truth about Lisa, and came down Cas's throat. Something that extended after they'd said goodbye.

Cas.

Where the hell did that come from?

It's been a long, weird, truly awful day, and he wants nothing more than to end it with sleep. Cut The Day He Left His Wife neatly off at the end and wake up on the other side.

The Day After He Left His Wife.

And the day after that.

The day after that.

Dean flips a thin motel pillow over his face, blocking out the flashing neon.

Sleep.

Sleep. Now.

Fuck.

Doors bang along the balcony of the motel the ice machine rumbles to itself and cars howl past on the freeway. Dean flips onto his front and buries his face in the stale bedding, the sheets itch at his naked back. He misses his bed, but missing that leads to missing other things. His home, his wife, his entire previous existence.

He wishes he'd sprung for a place with a mini-bar. If he's going to be this pathetic he might as well be drunk.

Voices cross the walkway outside of his room. He cracks an eye at the clock on the wall – 2 am. The voices get nearer, a deep British accent, but not classy, like the villain in a bad drama, cockney and brash.

"C'mon Bambie...come here..." indistinct shuffling and the bang of a thin door crashing against the wall in the room next to his own. Great. A lighter thud as someone, presumably the 'Bambie' in question – blond, doe eyed and easy as Dean imagines her to be, still trying to ignore the sounds from next door. "How much? How much for you...like this?" growled almost against the thin partition wall. Ah, a hooker then, fucking typical. A low laugh, unpleasant and insinuating. "You suddenly worth more eh? Someone been filling your head with business acumen?" the laugh again. "Get on your knees, two hundred Bambie, you're going to work for it." Dean officially gives up on sleep at the first moan.

It's unpleasant, the guys voice is like a rough trader who gargles rocks in between brandies. He keeps up a steady commentary, barking the occasional 'Faster' or the slightly more unpleasant 'God like that, fuck Bambie' which ruins about eight of Dean's childhood memories. After a long long time, the strangled groans of appreciation grown in both volume and frequency, ending in a growled out 'Fuck!' and then, blissful silence until...

"Swallow."

Dean wishes for death, or at least alcohol, now with more sincerity than before. He really should have factored in cheap hotel = hookers and loud sex. Clearly he wasn't thinking. Since he's going to be awake he figures he might as well stop pretending. He noticed a coke machine at the end of the walkway earlier and so he gets up, flicks on the TV and pulls on his pants, searching for change. He's ducking out the door when he hears it, on the walkway.

"Not worth two hundred, was it Bambie?" the voice has gotten, if anything, more unpleasant. Pressing and dangerously low. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Nothing you haven't paid for." Replies a stern rumble. Dean freezes, because it isn't a bimbo's voice, it's Castiel.

Small fucking world.

"Watch how you use that mouth of yours." Snarls the other man. "already getting sloppy at work...you wouldn't want to lose any teeth for speaking out of turn."

Dean opens the door, telling himself that this isn't his business, but that he has to intervene.

A man of about Castiel's height, but thicker with muscle and wearing the long dark coat and expensive suit of a businessman has the smaller man backed against the peeling paintwork. Castiel is bravely trying not to shiver in the night air, despite the fact that it's drizzling and he's still in the thin T-shirt and jeans he was wearing earlier.

"Can I help you?" the British asshole snaps. Castiel looks at Dean with faint surprise and perhaps a trace of relief.

"No but..." Dean's mind works quickly. "well...'Bambie' and I? We have an outstanding appointment...don't we?" he tries for sleazy and slightly smirking, hoping he's pulled it off. The guy looks at him a moment longer, then backs off from Castiel.

"He's not worth it." He confides, squeezing the other mans groin roughly before walking lightly in the opposite direction. "You can afford better kid."

Dean ignores him, waiting instead for the man to leave, getting into a black BMW on the other side of the parking lot.

"You ok Cas?" Castiel frowns at the name but nods, a smile curving his mouth but not reaching his eyes.

"Yes, thank you...I have come to expect the worst from Crowley."

"He's an asshole"

Castiel shrugs. "He's a client."

Dean doesn't really know what to say to that. Because sleeping with reasonable, nice women (like Lisa his mind adds traitorously) is one thing, getting shoved around by vicious pricks at the ass-crack of dawn in a sleazy motel...he feels sorry for the guy.

"You want to...I don't know, come in, for a while?" Castiel pauses, hesitating on the walkway. "Not for...just to get it together? I'll give you a ride home if you want."

A genuine smile, small but bright, quirks the other mans mouth.

"Thank you Dean"

He's stupidly happy that he's remembered his name – he only saw him that afternoon, it's not that impressive.

Castiel follows him into the motel room, glancing at the TV, showing some reality thing that looks pretty crappy anyway. He grimaces and looks a little sheepish.

"Could I, maybe borrow some mouthwash?"

"In the bathroom, take what you want." Dean keeps his movements smooth and light, trying not to look like the prospect of Castiel washing a client's spunk out of his mouth makes him feel cold inside. Castiel nods thankfully, retreats to the bathroom and after a few seconds Dean hears the swish of Listerine being circulated around someone's mouth. Castiel spits delicately and then returns, perching on the edge of Dean's rumpled bed.

"so...Bambie?" Dean bunches himself against the headboard, figuring this is as good a way to break the tension as any other. Castiel grins, dropping his head and shaking it slightly.

"Not my personal favourite...everyone seems to have a name for me...even you."

"If you don't like Cas I'll just call you Thumper."

"If you're not going to say anything nice..."

They realise they're flirting at exactly the same time. The shadows of the motel room wrapping around them and the silence creating a sense of intimacy.

"You charged him two hundred?"

"You were listening" Castiel seems politely amused by this. "Yes...I don't like him very much and fortunately my prices are mine to control."

"Thought you enjoyed...you know..."

"Blowing men?" Castiel says it with the kind of tone meant to sound like he's amused by Dean's squeamishness. Instead it comes out a little defensive and slightly shamed, not what he was going for. "Crowley isn't as nice as you were about it...and I don't usually..." Dean swears he can see a blush staining his pale cheeks. "My behaviour with you was somewhat unprofessional."

"You were...uh...kinda into it, huh?" Dean clenches his damp palms awkwardly. A smile that is both sly and shy spreads across Castiel's features.

"Very much so." He murmurs, and his voice has gone husky, his eyes flicking over Dean's face for a clue, any kind of hint as to where this is going. Dean is stuck looking at him, because as much as he's trying to remind himself that up until today it was Castiel and Lisa, with Dean on the sidelines fretting in ignorance...now it seems that they're the ones who are paired, exclusive and separate.

Castiel's hand slides up his thigh, rubbing softly at the growing hardness there.

"I can." His voice shakes a little, breath coming quicker and excitement clenching at his heart. "If you want me to?" His fingers brush Dean's fly and the larger man feels the brief touch, aching underneath it. He closes his eyes, mouth pinched shut against whatever he was going to say. He nods.

Castiel's quick about it. Nudging Dean backwards on the bed and dropping between his legs, he get's Dean's zipper down and then he's stroking, sucking and licking his way around the exposed flesh, watching for the larger man's reactions and taking him further towards the edge. The first thin mewl escapes him when Dean is fully situated down his throat, and Dean shudders with it, listening to Castiel slowly fall apart, one hand fisted around himself within his damp jeans.

The come within seconds of each other, Castiel leaning heavily against Dean's spread thighs, panting and trembling with the intensity. Dean's hand on his arm drags him back to the present, guiding him up onto the bed with resigned tenderness. When the larger body wraps around his Castiel can feel Dean shuddering with suppressed misery. He rubs his back in smooth circles, lying half underneath him and breath smelling of salt and Dean's load. When Dean eventually calms he notices their bodies pressed together, pants still undone. He moves slowly away from Castiel and zips himself up, the other man doing the same.

Dean finds his wallet and takes out another payment – fifty dollars. He hands it to Castiel who takes it wordlessly, pocketing the two twenties before handing back a ten.

"You helped me. Consider it a favour." The whore says quietly.

"Thank you, Cas"

"You're welcome." His voice is neutral, but soft and pleased at the edges like a cat that's been allowed in from the rain. "Would you mind driving me home now?"

Dean takes him down to the impala, driving them across town to the muted sounds of his tape player. Castiel looks out of the window at the first rising of the sun. When they pull up outside of his apartment block he leans towards Dean, hand touching his and discretely slipping him a black card, even though there's no one around to see – like he wants to pretend he isn't doing it.

"Any time" he says, quietly, stubble rubbing Dean's cheek when he kisses him, lightly on the brow. Castiel gets out of the car and lets himself into his apartment building without looking back.

Dean drives back to his hotel and goes to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean hates his divorce lawyer.

He's a pompous ass and he keeps trying to get him to make all kinds of claims. Infidelity apparently means he's entitled to contest the ruling that Lisa gets half of everything. He doesn't want half of anything. Lisa can take the house, all the things they bought together and everything he left there.

Dean just wants his half of the money and the chance to get away from her.

He can still feel what he used to have with Lisa, somewhere deep in his chest where he can't get it out, he still feels for her. It's just that the surface of him is mixed up, ruptured and wounded. He needs to fix that before he can work on forgetting her.

So he rents an apartment and opens a new bank account in his name only. Puts in overtime at the office job he hates but keeps on at because the pay's good. He runs in the evenings, keeping in shape despite the fact that he has no real reason to. He's never going to have to run or fight in real life. He barely has an interest in dating anyone, ever again.

He can't picture himself at a table in a restaurant, talking to a woman his own age about anything meaningful. He's never dated, when he hooked up with Lisa it was with the B side of Zeppelin II and a six pack of blue ribbon. He's never had to be an adult in search of company – he's never had to search. Period.

He keeps himself company these days. Albums playing on a loop on the weekends to cut through the silence of the apartment, TV over meals or a paperback propped against the ketchup bottle. He sleeps spread out on his bed, but wakes up with an armful of bunched up duvet and his face buried in the pillow. The sheets smell only of him, no one else has slept in them.

It's been three months since he left Lisa, and he's not a monk. Despite what Lisa seemed to think, he hasn't lost his interest in sex as he's gotten more corporate and average. He gets himself off when he needs it, he isn't going to be without for lack of any partners. He isn't going to hook up for the night either, too much work for something that'll leave him more lonely than ever. No chance of him calling Castiel either. Dean's never paid for sex before, two blow jobs don't tip the scale, and he isn't going to go back for more.

No reason he can't use it as fodder for his sex starved brain though.

The first time he see's Lisa in months is on his doorstep. She knocks for him on a Saturday, early in the morning. He's just gotten back from his run, showered and thrown on a pair of sweats to answer the door. Lisa is in her jeans and a neat sweater. Dean feels slovenly and bachelorish in comparison. She takes in his appearance, then looks beyond him into the apartment, a look of stony expectance on her face.

"There's no one here." He grinds out, closing the door behind her and standing by the couch, waiting for her to sit down.

"You're not seeing anyone?" She sits down, genuinely curious.

"It's been three months, of course I'm not." He drops into his own seat and waits for her to get to the point.

"I'd hoped we could talk about this Dean." She begins, and it's the same voice she used to call him in the first month, when there was still talk of reconciliation, at least on her side.

"You talked. I disagreed." He crosses his legs and drums his fingers on his thigh. "Hence the lawyer, we can get this thing done with as quickly as possible."

"This 'thing' is our marriage, Dean." She reminds him, voice sharp.

"It was our marriage, now it's just a lot of red tape and paperwork." He sighs. "is there anything you wanted to say? I have stuff to do today." A total lie, but he really can't deal with her today.

"I'm pregnant."

Just when he thinks he's hit the bottom of everything, when he goes from thinking his wife is cheating, to knowing that she is, and with a whore no less – something worse is always around the corner. Dean's learning that.

"Who's is it?" he asks, actually wanting to know and not just stir up the shit storm in which he lives.

"Yours Dean. I never..." she looks down. "When I was with...James...we always used protection." She breathes in deeply. "Dean...this changes things."

"This. Changes. Nothing." He gets out.

"Dean..."

"No, Lisa...you're having a baby, great. If it's mine I'll want to see it, if that's alright with you...but I don't want to be married, certainly not to you...and I wouldn't put a kid through the hell it would turn into."

"We were good together" Lisa murmurs. "At the beginning...we both made mistakes I know but..."

"What was my mistake, Lis?" his face crinkles in consternation. "Tell me what I did because it must have been so bad, to deserve this."

"You stopped wanting me."

"Bullshit." Dean never stopped wanting her. He still wants her now.

"You still loved me, but...I don't know, you didn't want me enough to keep hold of me."

"And he did?" Dean's voice increases in volume.

"I was more than just a comfort to him...to him I was..."

"A pay check." Dean growls, his own acidic self-loathing blindsiding him and making him feel both vile and self-righteous .

Lisa's face closes down, bitterness flaring in her eyes.

"You would have done the same if you'd even noticed something was wrong." She calms herself and reaches for his hand. "But now...you see, you know there's a problem and we can work on it...and the baby...it's a fresh start."

"No" Dean says, quietly. "No, it isn't"

"Dean..."

"Can you...Lisa just leave? I don't want to hear this again. I can't hear this again." He shakes his head, trying to banish the tension behind his eyes, the pain that locks his spine and chest. He wants to believe that all this is out of his reach, that he's made his choice. Because even now it's tempting – he could just go back to his house, back to his wife and his bed. Raise a son or daughter with her and be...content, lazily settled for life.

He slides the chain across on the door once she's gone, mainly to stop himself tugging the door open and going after her. He needs those few seconds of thinking time, the time it takes to release a chain.

He sits on the floor with his back to the door, phone in his hand. Castiel's card is in the pocket of the jeans he last wore months ago, slung at the back of his closet.

He still knows where it is, even though by rights he should have forgotten the card the moment he took the jeans off and shoved them out of sight. He taps the phone against his palm.

It would be so easy to call, to get Castiel over here or to drive to his apartment and pay a bunch of money to forget about Lisa for a while, to feel someone's hands on him, not begging for forgiveness and trying to force him to be ok, not trying to make him feel what he doesn't want to feel. Just bringing him off and sharing pleasure.

But he could get anyone for that, if not a woman from a bar, why not a different whore? A woman. Dean's never hired a hooker before – strippers yes, he isn't a saint, but he can still reason out how it would go. Where he'd go to buy sex from a stranger.

But he doesn't want a stranger, just someone who won't make demands of him, who won't disappoint. What he knows of Castiel, he likes. He doesn't lie.

And right now that's the most attractive thing about him.

Dean digs the jeans out of his closet and dials the number on the card.

"Hello?" the response is fast and brisk.

"Cas?" he blurts without thinking. There's a pause.

"Dean" and his voice is warmer now, like he's smiling, settling down for a long talk with an old friend. Dean appreciates that, even if it's just to put him at ease.

"Hi."

"You called me" he seems happy about that, but maybe it's just because Dean isn't a sadist or a weirdo, and he doesn't want anything strange.

"Yes" His throat feels thick.

"You want to see me."

Not a question but he answers anyway.

"Yes"

"Do you want me to come to you...or are you coming here?" Castiel's voice is low and gentle, coaxing him forward.

"Can you...come here? 479 Reeson Drive, apartment C"

"Of course" he says, like it's a given that he'll do whatever Dean wants. Maybe it is. "What time would you like me there?"

"Now...I mean, as soon as possible." He realises belatedly that Castiel must not get a lot of bookings before noon on a Saturday.

There's a thoughtful pause.

"Dean...is everything ok?" No one's asked him that, not since Lisa stopped noticing his moods, about a month before he found out about Castiel. The concern in his voice is genuine, cautious. So he finds himself telling the truth.

"No...I just...I need you, Cas." His hand rubs at his forehead, feeling anxiety and pain trapping him in again. It's not productive or adult but all he wants right now is a familiar face and a warm body.

"I'll be right over." Castiel says simply. "Whatever you need." He rings off and Dean puts down the phone, dropping to the couch to wait and contemplate why this is a very bad idea.

It takes an hour for Castiel to get there. That's long enough for Dean to run the gamut of emotional switch blades. Wanting Castiel to get there soon, never wanting to see him at all, wishing he'd never called, wishing he and Lisa were still together, remembering why they're not, remembering Castiel, what Castiel's done for him, getting hard, wanting Castiel to get there soon, remembering that he's a whore, that this is fucked up, never wanting to see him at all.

He's exhausted and pinched up and on edge by the time his buzzer goes. He pushes the button for the door release downstairs, four minutes later someone knocks quietly on the door. Dean opens it, heart in his throat, blood thrumming in his temples and his brain beating a tattoo of 'what the fuck are we doing? What the fuck am I doing?' against the inside of his skull.

"Dean." Castiel smiles at him from the doorway, grey T-shirt and jeans looking totally respectable for an escort on a house call. His hair is wet, flopping into his eyes in blue-black strands. His skin has the softened, naked look of someone who's just showered. Dean steps aside and lets him into the apartment, closing the door behind him. When he turns Castiel is just looking at him, head slightly to one side, expression curious and concerned. He appears to come to his own conclusions, either that or he realises that Dean really doesn't want to talk about it.

"Where's your bedroom?" he asks gently. When Dean nods in the direction of the door off to the side of the living room, Castiel takes his hand and leads him towards it. The silence is heavy and raw with expectation and Dean can barely keep his thoughts together. Castiel opens the door to his bedroom, leading Dean to the bed and touching his shoulder lightly, making him sit down. He moves him gently up the bed with the pressure of his hand, settling Dean against the headboard and then backing away.

He stands at the end of the bed, looking at Dean for a moment. Then he removes his T-shirt in one sinuous motion, dropping it to the floor. He unbuttons his fly, dropping his jeans and stepping out of them, his shoes discarded already. Dean hadn't noticed. Castiel slips out of his boxers, letting the dark blue fabric fall to his long, pale feet, he steps free of them and stands for a second, looking at Dean again, speculatively.

Dean looks over Castiel's body, realising that he's never seen him unclothed before. Has never really looked at a naked man beyond the occasional locker room awkwardness. He's seen Sam, but that's different, his brother was never going to be titillating, even if he wasn't eight feet of puppyish enthusiasm and muscle. Because Sam's his brother first and everything else after.

Castiel is ok to look at, Dean isn't going to allow thoughts of him being beautiful to enter his head, because Castiel is a guy and he's never thought of any guy as beautiful. He's slim but toned in a way Dean is not, no obvious cords of sinew on him underneath his pale skin. He's almost flawlessly white, only shadows of dark hair under his arms, the purplish smudges of nipples and the trail of dark hair from his navel downwards to mark him up. Dean's gaze reaches Castiel's eyes again before it goes any lower, the other man is watching Dean watch him, eyes intense beneath his damp hair. Dean lets his eyes drop down again, following the flowing line of Castiel's body down towards his groin, already half hard. Dean is caught up enough to consider him, the size and thickness of him, not in relation to himself, but instead as a part of Castiel entirely. His heart gives a nervous kick.

"You haven't looked at someone like this before...have you?" he says softly. "a man, like me."

Dean shakes his head, swallowing dryly and trying to still the pounding in his chest, the blood blaring in his ears and pulsing through the veins in his legs, pooling in his groin. Castiel tips his head sideways, a curious expression on his face. Slowly he moves to sit on the side of the bed, legs rising elegantly onto its surface until he's lying next to Dean, body angled towards him. Dean can see the individual hairs, dark and glossy, that pepper his limbs.

"You can touch me." Castiel mutters, voice low and calm even though something's coiling tight in his chest. Dean raises his hand uncertainly, reaching Castiel's shoulder, smooth skin under his large palm. He runs it down, over his side and chest, thumb catching his nipple on the way down. It's strange and not a little daunting, this body that is similar to his, and yet entirely different.

Castiel sighs, raising his body into the contact, eyes not leaving Dean's face as his questing fingers reach his stomach, coasting further, hesitating on his abdomen.

"It's ok" there's a thickness to Castiel's voice that he can't will away. Dean's hand moves over his skin, heart almost stopping as he touches Castiel intimately for the first time. The other man presses closer, arm rising over Dean's shoulder, fingers combing through his hair. Dean wraps his hand loosely around Castiel's erection, pumping even as he tries to get used to the sensation. He feels soft, smooth, underlying hardness with an edge of fleshy resistance. It's not like Dean's never touched himself, but this is infinitely different, touching without the blanket of sensation to distract him.

Castiel's mouth hovers near his own, their breathing equally ragged, catching in their throats as Dean begins to move his hand in earnest. Castiel's lips touch his own and it's a shock, contact that makes him twitch excitedly.

"What do you want, Dean?" His voice is breathy, confident, even as his hips move upwards to meet his fist. Dean drops his forehead helplessly against Castiel's shoulder, he can't think, not right now, what all this means, what this makes him. Castiel mewls as he tightens his hold, and suddenly there's only one thing he wants.

"Let me fuck you."

Castiel draws back enough to look him in the eye, blue intense and mouth half smiling. He just nods, moving slowly out of Dean's reach to crouch in front of him. Reaching behind himself his brow creases in concentration and his hand works deftly, removing whatever he's used to keep himself open. Dimly Dean is aware of this, of the mechanics of the thing. But only peripherally. What he wants is what he always wants from Castiel – to feel nothing, to forget everything.

"How do you want me?" He's still coaxing, gentle as he moves back into Dean's space, pressing against his lightly dampened skin. Dean can't answer, just rolls himself on top of Castiel and tugs his legs up and out of the way. He struggles briefly with his own clothes, shoving off his shirt and kicking his jeans to the foot of the bed.

The other mans fingers maps across his shoulders, finding purchase there as he moves on the bed, squirming into position.

They kiss shyly, briefly.

Dean pushes into him.

He loses all sense of time. Bent over Castiel's willing body, legs wrapped around his back as he fucks, deliberately and openly. Light streams in through the blinds, there are no sheets to hide underneath, only his back plunging up and down, Castiel wriggling, thrusting up. The low moans and grunts of exertion mixing with every slap of skin on skin, each wet, drawing sound as he moves in the slick space Castiel has made for him. Dean presses his face into the curve of Castiel's throat, hands dragging his hips up from the bed until he's thrusting down, deep and hot and perfect. Castiel's hand lands suddenly on the back of his head.

"There" sharp and broken, an unsteady groan sounding somewhere over Dean's head as he brings his hips down again, thrusting against the place Castiel needs pressure the most. Breathless rough pleas for anything that can tip him over the edge."Please...oh god, please...more there...there..." another twisted whimper as Dean complies, liking the way the man underneath him, name forgotten in white flashes, twitches and writhes with each press of his cock. Urgent hardness presses into his stomach, but touching it, chasing the other man towards orgasm, would mean dropping his hips, losing the glorious angle that has...

"Cas..."

Cas...almost folded in on himself, body jerking into his with every thrust. Nothing is going to make him abandon the heat around him, the depth and strength of the channel that's flickering around him, tensing and twitching.

The other man touches himself instead, his frantic fist bumping Dean's stomach on every other stroke. His head is thrown back, throat convulsing against Dean's temple as he whimpers wordlessly, deeper noises bursting free as he works himself towards the edge.

Dean doesn't notice Castiel's orgasm, only the hastening contractions that skate taught muscle over his cock. Insensible to the sudden slickness on his belly he feels only that the body underneath his has gone still, loose and pliant. Jerking the other mans hips higher, Dean ploughs on towards his climax. His throat is burning with each hastening breath, heart thundering, chest flushing and hips jerking tightly with each brush against the edge that recedes as he approaches. A desperate whine catches his throat in a tangle.

When he finally gets there, crashes into his orgasm and slumps, trembling as he spends, onto the warm body under his. He can barely think, barely move with exhaustion. The last thing he's aware of is being shifted to one side as the other man frees himself, stretching his legs out and pressing back into his chest, still rising and falling in an uncertain rhythm. He buries his face in sweat dampened hair, feels the other body nuzzle his in contentment.

He sleeps.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean wakes up a few hours later, aching and bleary from sleeping in the middle of the day. He looks up at the ceiling, feeling the dull burn as he shifts his cramped legs. His back throbs with recently released tension. He feels worn out and satisfied, but uneasy.

He remembers Castiel and looks to one side, seeing the other man curled contentedly on his side, facing him. His breathing is deep and even, mouth a tensionless dab of pink on his pale skin. No sheet covers them so Dean can see their bodies, semen on his own stomach, bruises blooming across Castiel's hips, showing where Dean gripped him harder and harder as he moved him against himself.

He swallows dryly.

He's just fucked a man, a prostitute, in the middle of the day. The first time he's been with a man, or a whore come to that. He feels bizarre, numbed against his own disgust for himself. The situation is too strange to feel real. It's like a very bad dream, one he might have had in the bed he shared with Lisa. A dream he might any minute wake up from.

Castiel frowns in his sleep when Dean moves away, padding to the shower to rinse off sweat and come and to give himself time to think.

What he thinks is – what the fuck am I doing? Over and over again as he soaps himself, standing under the streaming water and closing his eyes. What the fuck am I doing with a whore when I could date someone? What the fuck am I going to do about the baby? Why the fuck did it have to be him, again? Why Castiel?

What the fuck is happening to me?

It goes round and round in his head until he can't stand it anymore, grabs a towel and dries himself, stepping out of the bathroom and into the bedroom with the towel pinned against his hips.

Castiel is awake, sitting in the middle of the double bed with its rumpled white sheets. His knees are drawn up to his chest, his arms linked around them, his forehead resting on his knees. He looks very small, very dark in the middle of all that white.

He looks up when he senses Dean's presence.

The silence stretches between them, on and on and on until Dean prickles with unease.

"How much...how much do I owe you?" he says, voice seeming too loud in the formerly intimate quiet.

"A hundred" Castiel's voice cracks with sleep and Dean realises that he's just made the figure up. Castiel unfolds himself and goes to pluck his clothes up off the floor, vulnerable and naked. Dean quashes the thought, Castiel is anything but vulnerable- he is used to this. Dean is not. He still feels bad, especially when Castiel winces, moving awkwardly with pronounced effort to reduce the soreness that he must be feeling.

"Did I hurt you?" It comes out quiet, almost unheard. Castiel looks at him, then down at the purple blushes on his hips, he runs his fingers over them speculatively, not looking at him.

"No" his eyes meets Dean's, finally. He's adamant, sincere. A couple of bruises is nothing to a man like him, especially accrued in the way these were, bent up and shaking with orgasm. Castiel is fine with a little lasting mark of this afternoon. "No, Dean you haven't hurt me."

Dean nods, still pinched faced and awkward, like he doesn't believe it. Castiel steps into his underwear, followed by his jeans, lifting them to his hips and popping the buttons through. Dean realises that he's still naked under his towel, finds the pants he was wearing earlier and slips them on, followed by his shirt. Even once they're dressed the tension refuses to dissipate and Dean feels exhausted by it, by the day so far.

"So...if you want me to leave..." Castiel swallows, and for the first time Dean notices that this isn't running according to the rules. Castiel hasn't been paid, when that's the first step in these encounters, he remembers that much. Castiel has slept beside him and not simply slipped out unnoticed. He finds his wallet, fumbles loose the bills there and folds them, handing them awkwardly to the other man, who takes them and stuffs them into his pocket.

"Thank you...for coming over."

"Anytime." Castiel says, and the depth to that one word makes his chest ache. It's not a come on, a coy tease. It's Castiel promising to be there, whenever he needs it, whenever he needs this.

"I'll call."

Castiel nods once, stiffly and uncertainly. Dean leads the way back to the front door, holding his breath until Castiel is gone and the door is closed. He sits on the floor, exactly where he'd been when Castiel arrived, wondering what the hell he's done, and why it feels different to last time. Why he feels bad about Castiel leaving.

Castiel jogs down the staircase and opens the door onto the street. The money in his pocket presses at him and he realises that he can take a cab home if he wants, rather than catching the bus or walking the whole way. He can afford decent take-out for dinner, maybe catch a movie or stop by Barnes and Noble to pick up some new reading material. He's long past needing the cash for rent.

He gets to the third corner before he starts crying, and can't stop.

Backing into the alley behind a diner he leans a hand against the wall and feels the bitter, sick feeling in his stomach intensify with each sob. It's humiliating, urgent and out of his control. His eyes burn, tears well out and spread over his cheeks. He feels like a child, green, like he's new to this game, even though it's been years, years since he turned his first trick.

He feels used and small and so easily lost. He still has sweat and semen dried to his skin, bruises pressed into his skin, the taste of someone else's mouth on his own. He can smell Dean's aftershave on himself and it makes it worse somehow. Makes him shake harder as he tries to stop himself from coming apart like this.

And he has no idea why.


	5. Chapter 5

_So this is going to some strange and depressing places, you have been warned. _

Castiel steps out of the shower and dries himself, slipping on boxers and padding into his bedroom. His bed is made, the way he left it earlier, and he sinks onto it gratefully, wrapping the grey comforter around his naked shoulders. In the kitchen the coffee maker stirs, percolating the beverage slowly as a timer ticks off the minutes until his lunch is done. The apartment is small, modern and crisp with charcoal greys and dark blue. This is the private part, the public area, with the large couch for clients, is somewhere he never goes unless he's working. The smell of baked chicken slips under the door and reaches Castiel in his cocoon of soft felt.

It's been a long day.

He's gotten over his fit of sobbing, now that he's washed the evidence of his morning away and settled back into his home it almost doesn't feel real. He feels overly tired, a raw nerve that must be coddled back into insensibility. The crying, the overwhelming feeling of loss and despair that overcame him after leaving Dean has passed though, and he can see it for what it was now – a reaction to the uncommon intimacy of the act he'd committed with him. Castiel never gets to know his Johns beyond the name they choose to supply him with and the preferences they inform him of.

But he knows Dean better than that, has met his wife, even. Lisa told him things about her unseen husband that make him feel closer to Dean than he did to her, even before he'd met the man. Now he's met Dean Winchester, watched realisation hit him as he discovered his wife's infidelity, seen him face down Crowley with only a smile and a lie.

He's watched Dean unravel in misery three times, giving himself over to the uncertain pleasure, the formerly undesired touch of another man. Castiel has felt Dean pulse in his throat twice, voice broken in despair and agonising release. And now he's taken Dean inside of him. More than a fuck, more than a trick.

And so he cried, feeling emotion where none should be. Not love, not pity or hate or anything he could identify. But a warm weight that makes his eyes burn and his stomach twist when he thinks of the other man. The man who has paid a hundred dollars to use his ass like he might his own fist – release and relief. But he can't believe that of Dean, he knows (or wants to believe) that Dean is not so callous or unfeeling as Crowley, who calls him 'Bambie' and hurts him for sport.

As casual and light as Gabriel, who calls him 'Milk Dud' and pays for his company at strip joints and bars, hand jobs all round for his associates.

As heartless as Ruby who hires him once a month to take him to her husband's bed, and refers to him as 'Jimmy', making even his fake name diminutive.

Alistair who left scars, whiter than his skin now that they've healed over, called him 'Baby' and 'Angel' alternately while he ripped his back open with lash after lash.

Castiel has had his share of bad tricks, disturbed Johns, spoiled kept women and men come to that.

Dean calls him 'Cas' and makes it mean something. That's what gets to him, out of everything, that after all this time, someone managed to circumvent his barriers and get at the real him.

He flicks the television on, settles on a Boston Legal re-run and fetches his coffee and the food he left baking in the oven. Curled up in bed he allows himself to grow warm and relaxed, easing the aching maw of his stomach with good food and settling his turbulent mind with televised drama. He feels comfortable and, more than that, safe. Insulated from his job by layers of painstakingly upheld rules and lies and provisos.

Castiel and James (as Jimmy, Bambie, Angel, Milk Dud.) and never the twain shall meet.

He can believe it's that simple. As easy as it always was to keep 'James' in the bedroom, with his own cell phone, his own clothes, and Castiel in his private space with his hobbies and his interests. The money was the only thing they shared. That was how it was supposed to be. It's what he'd promised himself when he'd started work.

He can be professional. He can stick to the script. He can trot James out to whoever pays for him and leave at the end of things with nothing but a bruise and a few aches to take back to Castiel's life.

He can do this, because it's easy, and it's his job.

After lunch he sleeps for a while, getting up with his alarm in the early evening to get ready for his next client. A new one – Zachariah he called himself on the phone, though that really doesn't mean anything. Castiel dresses from his selection of 'James' wear – tight black jeans and a black shirt with blue trimmed cuffs. It's an out call, somewhere chosen by the client, Zach's going for the full fantasy experience.

It's almost a relief – Castiel doesn't want anything real, not tonight.

He takes a cab to the meeting place, a basement club, high end, in a district he's never been to before. He's nervous, jumpy with energy, which is unusual, he also really wants a drink - and he never drinks at work. The cab pulls up and he just knows the older, balding guy in the suit is Zachariah. Castiel doesn't mind, hooking isn't about finding your clients hot, and right now it feels like it'll be easier to fuck someone he has no investment in.

"James?" Zachariah asks smoothly.

"Yes" Castiel plays his best half smile, sultry as he can make it, sure of himself. It works – it always does.

"Excellent, you're in for quite an evening." Zachariah steers him towards the steps down to the door of the club. "I take it you've been to a place like this before? You must have some...experience? Given your line of work." Castiel nods and casts an eye over the hallway beyond the door, as he's steered down it he takes in the damask wall paper, the black painted floors, the alcoves with structures set up in them already, the racks and harnesses.

A bondage club, in essence. Though one of the upper class vanilla variety, rather than similar to Alistair's den. Castiel accepts Zachariah's offer of a drink, double whisky, neat. Preparing himself for the evenings labour.

It's nothing too odd, as it turns out. He strips off for Zachariah, lies face down and naked on a kind of lab table, cold steel and stirrups. Leather straps hold him in place, arms above his head and legs spread in the stirrups behind him, making his stomach muscles clench to shy away from the freezing metal table.

Zachariah leaves him like that for an hour.

Other people in the club approach from behind him, Castiel has no way of seeing them. No one touches him but he can hear them, feel them looking at him. He closes his eyes, feels the chill of the room on his bare back and thighs. He hardens himself against whatever is coming, something he never usually does. He can get off on this kind of thing normally, see it the way the client does, know that he's being splayed and displayed for someone's pleasure. It's a kink of his, one of a few he keeps buried in his life as Castiel.

James has no such boundaries.

But tonight James isn't eager to come to the surface. So that leaves Castiel, tied down on a slab with his legs spread wide, waiting for a paying stranger to fuck him.

It feels as wrong as it should, so very very hideous. Castiel, without his persona, isn't a whore, not usually. Now he's mixed up who he's supposed to be, lost the division between himself and who he pretends to be to get things done.

Fingers probe him unexpectedly, preparing him with chilly lubricant. He rests his forehead on the steel table and tries to make it feel like something else, make this act feel like sex, like work – anything but rape. Because it's not, he agreed to this, he wants to do this, get paid, go on with his life. He's never felt like this before, but suddenly he feels young, and innocent and afraid.

When Zachariah pushes into him he closes his eyes and tells himself, over and over, that he's a whore.

It doesn't help. He believes it but it doesn't help.

It doesn't hurt, but every desperate rutting motion from Zachariah makes something break in his chest. He squeezes his eyes tight and breathes, trying not to tense up. The client fucks on towards his orgasm, he doesn't notice the unguarded misery of the man underneath him. Castiel wonders if he'd care if he did, if he'd _stop._

Probably not.

Zachariah nudges his prostate only a handful of times, and each brief hitch of pleasure makes Castiel's stomach writhe, enough so he prays he won't be sick, at least not until it's over.

The feeling of the man coming inside of him almost breaks Castiel open. He feels the same way he did in the alleyway after Dean...

Dean...

Hot and dark with shame and fear and lonely – so lonely and small and cold.

He feels Zachariah slide free, flaccid and wet. The straps on him are loosened and Castiel gets off the table, recovers his clothing and puts it on.

Two hundred dollars, resting in his pants pocket.

"I hope to see you again" Zachariah murmurs, close as he rests a hand on Castiel's back, guiding him to the door of the club. "I'll make an appointment soon."

Castiel smiles the smile that never fails him.

Hugs himself on the cab ride home, self comforting because, really, who else is there? Feeling spunk gradually saturate his underwear.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean washes the bed linen free of the scent of sex and the traces of Castiel's lube. He can still smell it somehow though, despite the shower he's taken, the open windows and the laundry thumping in the washer, the smell is everywhere. Imagined or real he can't shake it.

Lisa calls him in the afternoon, her voice tired on the machine - 'Dean...call me, please? We need to talk about the baby...and I'm sorry, about today...god, I wish...I wish I could make this ok for us, I really do, but I can't change what I did, alright? So can we talk, about this?'

He doesn't call her back; neither does he erase the message.

Sam has emailed him, Dean wonders briefly if everyone has just synced up, decided he can't be left alone.

_Hey,_

_Been a while since you called, wanted to see if you're ok. I'll be down in a few weeks if you feel like doing something, hanging out maybe? _

_I know you must be sick of people saying this but, it'll get better, Dean. We're here if you want to talk about it, if not...well I guess that's cool too, as long as you need us we'll be around – me, Mom, Dad...hell, even Jess wants to know if you're ok. (and I didn't think she'd gotten over that whole 'I love the smurfs thing' ) _

_Seriously, call me._

_Sam_

Dean clicks reply, but can't think of anything to write, so he doesn't.

He doesn't have work until tomorrow, so he's stuck for something to do. He waits on his laundry, has a cup of coffee, goes through some of the paperwork he's had to start bringing home from the office with him. Shoves his wet sheets into the dryer, starts cooking dinner.

He feels cold. Not in the empty, lonely way he has felt, but as if he's run out of heat. He remembers the warmth of Castiel's skin, blazing to a sweating furnace the more he touched it, the further he sank into it. The way it felt to have blood beating in his ears, hands scrabbling at his back, legs locked against the sides of his body as they rocked, rocked and ground and thrust through it.

Now he's cool, cold.

He wants, holy fuck does he want it back. But there's a line he can't cross here. He can't become one of those guys, sad, lonely, obsessed men who frequent the same hooker and sink all their money into a fantasy.

Dean can't bring himself to lose himself in a lie, he's already done that, albeit in a different way.

He doesn't want to be like Lisa, hanging on to something he wants, even as it destroys his life.

He can't see that look on Castiel's face again, curled in on himself in the empty bed, open and honest and not looking at all like someone who can casually accept money for sex.

He looked like a kid, like a lost little boy who needed a Father, his Mom, hell even just a cop – anyone who could help him without getting lost in him.

Dean can't do that – he wants him too much.

Still, he can't help but think as he sits on the edge of his clean bed, ghostly scents of sweat and musk still clinging somewhere, maybe Castiel doesn't have his parents, not anymore. You don't become an escort, a whore or whatever you want to call it, without losing something, someone, along the way. Maybe he could use anyone at this point, even a selfish John like Dean.

He picks up the phone, dials Castiel's number and gets his voicemail.

"Cas?...uh, Castiel?..." he really has no idea what he was going to say, what he should say. "I'd like to see you again." Is what comes out, maybe that was what was always going to come out, and the thoughts of wanting to help the other man were just window dressing on this one, raw, need. Making it ok, making it acceptable for however long it took to get Castiel on his back again.

"Call me..." it sounds like an order, like something a client would say. "Jesus...even if you don't want to see me again...just call me and let me know...let me know that you're ok. Please." It comes out quietly but he means every word, because Castiel may be a whore, may only come to him for the money, but he had looked so...wronged.

Dean needed to know if he'd gotten back alright, if he was ok.

Castiel played the message with three others when he walked in the door, shedding his shirt and pants on the way through his apartment. He discarded his underwear, dragged the comforter from his bed and opened the door to the client lounge, hunkering down on the enormous couch with his blanket around his shoulders. He curled on his side, listening to the recorded voices in the stillness of the darkened apartment.

"...Jimmy, Michael is out of town next weekend. You're booked 4 till 6, don't be late..."

"...Angel, it's been a while. Have you healed yet baby?...I want you to be ready to go again soon..." Alistair's voice crowded him in and the dark seemed to drown out the rest of the apartment, until there was nothing, nothing but the surface under his cheek and the stilted blackness. He never wanted to see Alistair again, would never if he had anything to say about it. But the message still shook him.

"...Cas?...uh, Castiel?..." Dean's voice came out of the dark, not interrupting it, not throwing it aside in a brilliant dart of light, but just out of the dark. Castiel breathed slowly through his nose and listened to the sound of his own breath as Dean's voice went on. Another appointment with him, that's what he wanted, and why not? Wasn't like Dean wasn't getting what he wanted.

"Jesus...even if you don't want to see me again...just call me and let me know...let me know that you're ok. Please."

He almost misses it as he rolls over, face to the back of the couch. The words make his throat go tight and he buries his face in the fabric of the comforter. Dean is somewhere, thinking about him. Worrying, about him. Or at least he was, briefly. Even still naked and marked from his appointment with Zachariah, Castiel feels a stirring of something like peace, almost calm.

Dean wants to see him again.

Eclipsed almost immediately by the knowledge that seeing Dean again could only damage him more, blur James and Castiel together until both of them are gone. He'll be nothing by the time this is over.

He leaves all three messages unanswered, digs out a bottle of vodka from the back of his refrigerator and proceeds to get drunk, on the client couch, the chill liquid freezing his insides to mercury. He presses his cheek into the warn leather of the sofa and tries to still the pounding in his head and the ache between his thighs, what he wants is oblivion, to sleep without the worry of waking.

What he gets is drunk slumber, and nightmare about being tied down, back searing with pain whilst people laugh from somewhere unseen.

He wakes three hours later to vomit, kneeling on the cold bathroom floor.

On his way to bed he erases the messages on his machine – now whatever he decided to do later, he's already lost Dean's number. That's the end of it. The end of Castiel's input in James's work. From now on, things will be different, regimented and orderly.

He sleeps dreamlessly this time, warmer and more collected now that the alcohol has been forced from his system.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean types out his reply to Sam the next morning.

_Sam,_

_I'm fine. Just leave it, ok?_

_See you in a couple of weeks – takeout/movie?_

_Dean. _

He picks up the phone only when he knows Lisa will be at work, leaving her a message so as to avoid speaking to her in person. Cowardly? Probably, but it's all he can give her right now.

"Lisa? We can talk, about the baby and what you want to do. Give me a couple of days, alright? Call round on Friday, we'll sort something out."

No word from Castiel.

Dean gets dressed, heads to the office and pushes papers like his life depends on it. He focuses on the placement of every paperclip and pen, his keystrokes precise as he types out document after document. He hates his job but he loves it to, it's like running on a treadmill, absorbing despite the fact your going absolutely nowhere.

Lunch hour is the same as usual, coffee, black with a tuna and mayo sandwich and a fruit cup. He eats alone on one side of the office cafeteria. He doesn't have any work buddies, something he's never contemplated before, but now it leaves him with an hour to stew.

Castiel hasn't called him back, which means one of two things, either he's fine and he just never wants to see Dean again. Or some asshole like Crowley, or worse, has done something to him or taken him somewhere.

Dean makes his decision halfway through his second cup of coffee – if Castiel doesn't want to see him again he can shut the door in his face – as long as the other man is able to open the door and safe behind it, Dean'll be happy.

He finishes up his work with apprehension tying a knot in him. Takes his car from the employee parking lot and drives the way he remembers, over to Castiel's apartment building.

At the foot of the block he presses the buzzer, waiting for a response. A long pause stretches out, he presses the button again, holding it down and imagining the noise ringing in Castiel's deserted apartment.

"Yeah?" it's not Castiel, it's someone else, a man, but beyond that Dean can't make out anything about him.

"I'm here to see...James" he manages, somehow to sound neutral.

"He doesn't want to see you right now."

"Well, he can tell me that himself...no offence but I'm not inclined to trust any of the men he knows." Dean swallows, hearing the static of the pause buzz on the line.

"He's busy." There are layers to the voice, what he's saying and what he means. _I'm busy. We're busy, wait your turn._

"I'll wait. Buzz me in."

The door release beeps and Dean swings it open, jogging up the stairs towards Castiel's apartment. When he reaches the familiar door another man is just coming out, shorter than he is and wearing a red shirt under a brown leather jacket. He gives him a fairly genuine smile, all twinkly eyes and crooked nose.

"All yours buddy." He trots jauntily past Dean and into the stairwell. "Sorry for grilling you, didn't want a scene...you know how it is." He cocks his head in a confiding gesture, face twisting in easy camaraderie. "Poor guy gets all kinds all kinds of jerks."The door swings shut and Dean hears him hopping down the stairwell.

"Dean?" Castiel's head rounds the door jam and he peers out into the hallway. His hair is a little ruffled, his cheeks pink and his mouth reddened. Dean's stomach gives an uneasy clench at the sight.

"I called you." He says, quietly.

"I got your message." Castiel sighs. "I chose...I decided, not to do...this...again." he indicates the two of them with a weary hand gesture. "I hope you're not offended."

"Fuck offending me!" Castiel starts at the shout. "Cas...I was _worried _about you, I wanted to make sure you were alright after..."

"After you paid me for sex." Castiel's voice is quiet, his eyes not quite meeting Dean's. "I'm actually used to that, though I appreciate the concern..."

"Bullshit. You're telling me that's how you look every time you see a client?"

"How did I..."

"Like the world was ending Cas, like you had absolutely nowhere to go and no one around you."

Castiel looks him in the eye then.

"You came to check on me. I'm fine." There's no response to that. "I'm. Fine. Dean." And there's a hint of desperation to his voice this time, like if he has to say it again he'll crack. Dean steps forwards, hands reaching the smaller man's shoulders and sliding over them.

"Cas...for a whore, you're a shitty liar." He says gently, and that's that does it, Castiel's eyes drop to the floor and his shoulders dip forwards, his face crinkling as he fights for control, and looses. "You can tell me." He sounds more certain than he feels, but then, Castiel has already slept with his wife, and told him about it – nothing he can say would shock Dean more than that.

"There's nothing..." Castiel says, like there was originally more to that sentence, like the words 'wrong with me' are still half formed in his mind. He braces himself and looks up at Dean through his lashes. "You wanted another appointment."

All the saliva in Dean's mouth disappears, leaving it dry and a heavy weight sliding down his throat, hot and smooth into his stomach, weighing his limbs with heat. He nods. Castiel nods in understanding, stepping back into the apartment and leading Dean after him, pressed close. Higher purposes are not at the forefront of his mind, not now that Castiel is here and willing and so warm against him. They barely make it to the bed, Castiel moving quickly towards the bedroom, his bedroom, like he's afraid he'll lose his nerve. He gets to the bed, stripping quickly out of his clothes and settling himself on the mattress in his underwear.

"Strip" he says quietly, already going for the top drawer of the bedside table. "and tell me what you want." He produces a condom, dropping it onto the top of the table, Dean realises that they hadn't used one before, he'd forgotten that.

Dean pulls off his shirt, shucking his jeans to the floor he finds himself on the bed, half over, half behind the reclining figure of Castiel, hands caressing him and mouth pressing in breathless, hungry movements against his shoulder. Castiel presses back into him, eyes closed and heart struggling painfully against his ribs at the contact.

"I don't know." Dean's voice comes out rougher than he intended, almost incomprehensibly low and drawn. "I don't know...I want..." he buries his face against Castiel's neck, biting the pulse point there, bolder now, more so than the first time they'd done this. It takes Castiel a minute to come back to what Dean's saying, muttering against his skin as his hands smooth over his underwear covered flanks and groin. "...good, Cas...make you feel so good...so good..." he almost locks up at that, because it's been a long time since it was about him. He's gotten off with clients, gotten himself off for their enjoyment, had them tell him they're going to make him come, scream, beg, promised him he'd feel them for days...but it was never about him, always about them, what they wanted to say, to think, of him.

Dean shifts Castiel onto his back, hovering over him and pressing his mouth to his chest, swirling a nipple cautiously with his tongue on the way down his body. The other man squirms, breath coming in short hitches when Dean's hands take his hips, holding them and then slipping his underwear off and letting it fall to one side. Naked and spread out on the bed Castiel watches Dean watch him, eyes tracing every part of his body, the fading bruises on his hips and the dark, crisp hair that leads to his groin, already fully attuned to Dean's assessing gaze.

"Cas..." he drops his mouth to the bruises, mapping them with his lips as Castiel mewls, he moves back, ghosting hot unsteady breaths across Castiel's erection, the skin twitches and he can feel it all the way up his spine.

"Tell me what to do." Dean looks up at him, face set like he's uncertain about doing something mildly unpleasant, which from his perspective Castiel supposes is right. He shrugs it off, this isn't something most people enjoy, but it means enough right now, Dean's second time and already he wants to give him this. He takes himself in hand, the other going to Dean's jaw, squeezing slightly so that his mouth falls open with a soft sound, damp lips parting. He guides his mouth over the tip of his cock, feeling breath and the ghost of heat like a physical ache in his belly.

"Like this" his voice is soft, but unravelling with each passing second. Dean's lips touch the edges of his head, mouth descending on him, just enough to tease out a hesitant pulse of pre-come. Castiel curls his toes and squeezes his eyes shut because, Christ this is it, this is going to kill him.

"More" hushed and reverent, his hand moves from his shaft, replacing the pressure with Dean's own palm, his own fingers wrapped on top of it, squeezing and stroking. "Tongue the head...just underneath..." the obedient kittenish rasp of contact knocks the breath from him. "Yeah...again...aga-in" his throat catches as Dean takes another half inch of him into his mouth. His feet flatten on the bed, but he doesn't move, can only lie, supine as Dean does as directed, making him squirm towards his orgasm, a desperate blind feeling building in him.

Dean takes as much of him as he can, stroking the base as directed, he swallows and it's just enough to catch the tip of him, the sweep of his throat muscles and the nervous rise of his tongue almost unbearable.

"Swallow" Castiel grunts as he pitches his hips upwards, finding no resistance as Dean swallows again around him. He can't stop shaking, body buzzing with impending release. "Swallow" his hand clutches the back of Dean's head. "Please...please..." Dean swallows and Castiel convulses, edging closer towards ecstasy, shoved there with every move. "Swallow...Swallow...like...that...just like that...I'm..." He tugs Dean's hair and pulls him off, coming with a loose gasp, onto Dean's chest and shoulder as he moves back.

He can't move anymore, falls back against the bed, trembling everywhere, all over and inside. Dean's naked body moves next to his, the other man wrapping and arm across his waist and kissing him, slick and dirty with salt and the familiar bitter tang. Castiel opens his mouth to it lazily and closes his eyes, blissed and open and lost all at once.

Dean's hips twitch against him and Castiel tears himself away long enough to notice that he's hard. And that's the point of this, he reminds himself, James –like and fighting himself for control, to get Dean off, the client, the job, the John. He rubs against him, warm and amenable.

"Cas..." Dean looks desperate, wanting and nervous and surprised with himself.

"Thirty. Anything you want." Castiel pulls him closer and rocks with him, offering the solace of their client-escort script. "Anything you want." He murmurs, serious, feeling desire, need for the first time since he was last with Dean. It still doesn't feel right, not like work, but not a violation either, so he can put it down to progress. To anything at this point as long as Dean will stay, be inside him and over him and...

Dean shifts Castiel's legs out of the way, lying on top of him, pulling him up and finding Castiel slick and expectant, as he always is. Castiel goes limp on the spoiled sheets as Dean enters him, moaning low and long at the silk slide of flesh inside of him, uncommon softness over it's resilient, blood filled core. Dean holds his breath, heart pounding, sinking down and through, condom forgotten on the side table.

"God..." his throat mangles the word.

"Mmmmm..." Castiel brings their bodies flush, legs squeezing Dean's sides. He moves with Dean, meeting his thrusts eagerly and letting his head fall back. He knows this is going to break him and he doesn't care, he feels too good, can feel Dean groaning, growling low and deep every time he sinks back into him, feel him strike a spasm of ecstasy that makes his fingers and toes twitch, his back arch from the mattress in want. He clenches around him, holding him in, pulling him back.

"Fuck..." Dean pants, half groaning into his shoulder. "Oh my...fuck...do that again." Castiel does and Dean shudders, choking off a broken sound. "Keep...Cas, I need that...I need..." he rolls his muscles around him again, Dean's moan grows in volume, stuttering as he comes with a few more twitches of Castiel's channel, collapsing on top of him.

After a few minutes of silence punctuated only by harsh breaths and the brush of sweating limbs on cotton sheets, Dean rolls to one side, resting next to the lax body of Castiel. He takes in his stiff face and closed eyes, concern mounting in him.

"Cas...?"

"I'm fine." Castiel's eyes remain closed, his body artificially still. "It's fine." Dean says nothing, but lies down beside him, arms pulling the smaller, unresisting body of the other man closer, his face nudges the top of Castiel's head and Dean feels his shaky breath against his shoulder. He drags the comforter over them and tucks Castiel close against his body.

"You blew him, didn't you, the guy who was here before me?" He whispers against the untidy softness of Castiel's hair. The smaller man nods, back tensing under Dean's hands. "He didn't get to taste you." Not a question, a statement. Dean holds him closer, warm and comfortably muscled, Castiel relaxes again.

"No one does that for me." He says quietly, muffled by Dean's shoulder, breath tickling the skin.

"Just me." Dean nuzzles his hair absently. For some reason he likes that idea, that he can make Castiel feel good, that he chooses to, and that makes him different to all the others. "You've had someone inside you, since me?"

Castiel nods against him.

"Was it good?" he shakes vehemently and Dean knows he's close to the source of Castiel's strangeness, to what isn't really 'fine'. "Why wasn't it good?" he takes it carefully, like addressing a child.

"It didn't feel...like work...not even like sex." Castiel whispers wearily. "I didn't really want to be there...I think I've lost...whatever it is that makes someone good at this, hooking." Dean strokes his back.

"And with that guy, just now?"

"Gabriel's different, he doesn't want much, and he's nice." Castiel tips his head up and looks at Dean carefully. "He doesn't...he doesn't really need me to be there, it's not that he wants me to...feel with him, he just wants me to blow him."

Dean, for all that it will probably damn him, understands the difference between someone paying for your involvement and someone paying for your enthusiasm. Gabriel it seems is one of the former type of clients.

"You're worth more than thirty bucks, Cas." Castiel lowers his eyes and scrunches in on himself under the covers. "Hey" Dean holds him gently and won't let him slide away. "You are...and I can't stop thinking about you, about this..." he indicates their naked bodies, wrapped together. "I wouldn't have come here for anyone else."

That's a difference Castiel has to think about, as he lies against Dean's chest, lulled into sleep with comforting words and honest contact. The difference between Gabriel paying for his participation, Zachariah paying for faked enthusiasm for his bondage game...and Dean, who just wants him, Castiel, not just the sex that he can get anywhere. But him.


	8. Chapter 8

Castiel wakes, loose and warm and comfortable, for a moment wondering why there's a body next to him, something that hasn't happened here, in his own bed, for a long time. He turns onto his side, looking through the sheets, pulled almost over his head, at Dean, sprawled beside him.

"Hey" Dean leans up a little, blinking in the subtle light of the lamp across the room. "Good sleep?"

"Yeah" Castiel shucks off the covers, sitting up and smoothing a hand over his hair. Dean wavers in indecision.

"If you want me to leave..."

"No." Castiel turns bottomless eyes on him, voice quiet and cracking from sleep. "If you want to be here...I don't want you to go." His hand moves, resting on Dean's sheet covered torso. "Stay, please?" Dean moves closer in answer, moving Castiel towards him and pulling the sheets in close. His breath tickles the fine hair by his ear and Castiel closes his eyes.

"Cas?"

"Mmmmhmmm?" He burrows slightly, nestling into the warm space in the bed between the mass of blankets and Dean.

"When did you start doing this? Escorting I mean."

Castiel rolls over so they're lying face to face.

"A while ago...maybe five years?" He frowns. "Seems about right."

"Why?" Dean's hands run to his sides, their breath close and warm between them.

"Good pay for less work." Castiel closes his eyes. "I like being able to support myself, and it's easy. Hard as it is for you to believe, sometimes I enjoy it."

"And sometimes you get Crowley."

"Crowley is..." Castiel's face twitches into a frown. "Neither the best nor the worst client I've had."

Dean's fingers trace the slightly raised scars on Castiel's back.

"Like whoever did this?" Castiel hadn't thought he'd noticed.

"Alistair." Castiel looks up at him. "He was not what I thought him to be...he didn't follow the rules."

"You have rules?"

"No scarring, no biting, No scat, no drugs..." Castiel reels off. "Never drink with clients, get the money first, check in with the agency, use protection..." His voice is monotonous, bitter. "Yes I have rules."

"And how many have you broken?"

"Almost all of them." Castiel says softly, body shifting against his. "Many in the last few weeks."

"And this Alistair guy...he hurt you?" Dean tightens his hold slightly, drawing Castiel further into his personal space.

"I knew he wanted to hurt me." Castiel seems concerned with the technicalities of the thing. "But he was supposed to stop, if or when I couldn't take anymore." He shakes his head. "I didn't work for a while after that, now I mostly take people like Gabriel, or women, they want fun or vanilla sex, which is good for me." There's a pause as Castiel considers his words. "Shit, I'm sorry."

"I don't care about...whatever you did with Lisa? I'm glad you didn't get hurt." He pauses. "She's pregnant by the way."

Castiel looks at him in surprise.

"It's not...I mean it can't be..."

"I know, she told me you were using protection." Dean sighs and slumps against the pillows. "I'm going to be a Father."

"You'll be good at it." Castiel says sincerely.

"Good to know." He strokes Castiel's hair and the other man frowns at him. "So...what about you, no family around? Parents...siblings?"

"Dean." Castiel's eyes are unwavering. "Are you asking me if my shitty family life is the reason I do this?...because there are better ways to approach such a question."

"No I was just...curious."

Castiel sighs, but moves impossibly closer anyway.

"My parents died while I was in high school, and my older brothers took custody of me. Michael was nineteen and Lucifer was just turning twenty. We didn't have much money after that, they both had to drop out of college to come and take care of me, not that Michael minded but Lucifer was always ambitious." He shrugs. "when I came of age I didn't want to burden them anymore so I moved out, came here and had a few jobs, dish washer, parking cars, handing out pamphlets...but I couldn't make the rent, so I answered an ad for this...and I've been doing it since." He meets Dean's eye. "No child abuse, no drugs, and my family were cool with me being gay...as far as I know. They even still send me cards at Christmas."

"Sorry, guess you must get that a lot."

"More than you'd think." Castiel murmurs. "I do it because I can, that's pretty much it."

"What about you though? No partner or, boyfriend...when was the last time..."

"...Someone stayed, after?" His voice is low, thoughtful and sad. "I don't know...when I first started...I tried but there was always something. No one stayed around long."

"You ever think about quitting?"

"Is there a point to this? Or do you enjoy making this hard for me?" Castiel whispers.

"Cas..."

"I think about quitting all the time." Harsher than he intended, but true nevertheless. "Can we stop now? Can you just...just leave it alone?"

"One more...I promise - If I asked you to meet me...just you, no cash, no asking what it is I want, would you?" Dean has no idea what makes him says it, he's bad at relationships, at dating and Castiel is still a man, which is a whole new level of awkwardness for him. He just wants to know, because against his better judgement he wants Castiel around, with him.

Castiel's face is a mixture of painfully sharp hope and guarded suspicion. But he says it anyway. "Yes."

"Would you like to..."

"Yes."

Dean swallows.

"But we don't have to do this right now." Castiel murmurs, knowing when to cut in, when to save them from moving too fast or too far. His lips touch Dean's lightly, drawing him into a deeper kiss as he shifts against him, no longer sheltering in the curve of his body, but turning possessive, arms and legs grappling him closer and holding him.

Dean lets him, waking up to the movement of the lithe body against his own, warm and smooth and insistent. He knows at least that he likes this part. That he wants Castiel's small frame underneath his own, that he wants to be inside of him and taking him over the edge, writhing and still moaning, impossibly, for more of him. Now he's learning the man himself, quirks, memories...and finding him no less that before. More than a willing cavity. He holds him and moves against him, for the first time not in escape, but in an effort to know, intimately, someone new.


	9. Chapter 9

When they wake up again Castiel gets out of bed, brings back coffee and Dean flips the TV on so they can ignore the news and then several mini-soaps. Dean tells Castiel about Sam and his law degree, about his Mom dying and his Dad raising them. They talk about where they went to school, what it was like and what they watched on TV when they were kids. Castiel sucks him off lazily, Dean propped against the headboard with his hands in the back of Castiel's head as the other man grinds the mattress. When he flops onto his back, swallowing thickly, they turn to talking about their ex's.

Dean avoids talking about Lisa, instead telling Cas about Jo from high school and Anna who came after her. Castiel describes his first girlfriend, then the first guy he slept with. He's had a handful relationships and no casual encounters, nothing like Dean, who despite his two serious girlfriends has had dozens of hook-ups.

"So how does it work?" Dean's fingers gently circle the edge of his entrance, where Castiel now looks slightly sore. "What you do?" Castiel cracks an eye and looks down on him, legs spreading a little wider.

"The job?" Dean nods. "The agency tells me who I'm seeing, I see them and do what they want. If they want another appointment they call me and I tell the agency. It makes things feel more personal, apparently." Castiel's head falls back against the pillows. "Why are we talking about work?"

"Because I work in an office, sue me for being curious." He crooks his fingers and Castiel makes a sound like a small animal in a trap, it's possibly the hottest thing he's ever heard.

"Do that again."

He does.

Castiel smiles lazily and rocks down onto Dean's fingers. "Perfect."

"Has anyone ever wanted you to fuck them?"

"Professionally you mean?" This earns him another twist of Dean's fingers.

"Obviously, and before you say anything – I mean men, not women."

"Once or twice, most people don't pay to be topped...Yes, there." He shifts. "Definitely more in that direction."

"Controlling thing aren't you" Dean complies anyway, stroking his walls diligently.

"When I get the chance." Castiel stretches, sighing, "which isn't often."

"So, what would you do with me, if it was just what you wanted?" His hand moves faster and Castiel is having trouble with conversation, with words in general because he's so sensitive, so worn out and every stroke is sending him shuddering with too much sensation.

"I'd...I want to..."

"Tell me, you can say anything..." Dean slips another finger inside of his loose, shivering lover. Castiel hisses and squirms down on it, fucking in earnest. "Do you want to fuck me?" He licks a wet stripe up Castiel's thigh, nipping the space between it and his groin. "How long has it been, since you were inside somebody?" Castiel doesn't answer, but spasms under Dean's touch, coming with a vulnerable keening sound of want.

After a shower and another round of groping, curled together on the couch now that the bed is wrecked beyond comfort, Dean notices the time.

"I have to work tomorrow." Castiel kisses his neck, eyes closed and breathing in the scent of Dean and his own soap.

"Me too"

"Come to my apartment next week." It's an idea, not a command and Castiel appreciates it. "You could stay over...we'll have food, movies..."

"Of course." Castiel smiles, kisses him fully on the mouth. He combs a hand through Dean's hair. "This has been...I don't think I've had this much fun in a long time."

Dean doesn't know what to say to that, so he kisses him instead.

"I'll see you. Be safe." He murmurs, close against Castiel's ear.

And he knows that he will, that at some point they've passed the point of being casual, of being separate. Now Castiel will definitely surface again and Dean finds himself looking forward to it already as he drives away.

Castiel lies on his bed, sated and warm and tired. There are no bruises on him this time, and he can feel ever touch with odd clarity, soft dry palms running over his back and thighs, lips on the back of his neck and fingers raking through his hair, moving inside of him. He tries to blank out the feelings of affection, of warmth, that spread through him when he thinks about Dean, but he can't. And he is so unbelievably fucked. So far gone that all he can do is wait and see whether he's going to break his heart or love him back.


	10. Chapter 10

Castiel sees three clients in the time between Dean leaving his apartment, and Castiel's planned visit to Dean's place.

Gabriel pays for a slow, easy blow job and then spends his twenty minutes of recovery time asking about 'that tall guy who came to see you'. It's actually pretty nice to talk to someone about his life beyond the usual 'how did you end up doing this?' So he tells Gabriel as much as he dares whilst the smaller man nods thoughtfully and smokes.

"You should definitely see him again. It'd be good for you." Castiel raises his eyebrows. "I mean it, you're due."

It's weird, growing to like Gabriel. Not as much as he likes Dean, or even in the same way...still it's nice to be friendly with someone who knows the worst parts of his life, the things he usually lies about, and who still treats him with respect and genuine affection.

He imagines this is what it'd be like if his brothers knew of his career and could accept it.

The other clients are Zachariah, booking the same thing for a second time. It's not as bad as before, now that Dean has officially crossed into personal rather than professional territory it's easier to draw his boundaries.

The agency sets him up with a new client, a fairly creepy guy with yellowish-brown irises and a predilection for blood play. It's fairly light as kinks go, he spends a good amount of time tracing lines of blood down Castiel's back, and it's not like Castiel minds, it's not his blood after all.

He tells Dean this over a fairly bizarre game of scrabble, bizarre both because neither of them should be the kind of person to enjoy it, but they do, and because Castiel keeps having to explain that 'felching' is a word. The TV is turned low and there's an open box of pizza on the floor between them. Castiel sitting Indian style as Dean asks him about his week and tries to make a word from HEOFLSV.

"Sounds busy."

"Not too much though, sometimes I get a lot of..." he looks at the set of Dean's jaw. "this is bothering you."

"I asked, didn't I?"

"That doesn't mean you wanted to know." Castiel eases himself from his cramped position and comes to sit at Dean's side, arm circling him from the front and tracing his spine. "If it bothers you I won't talk about it."

"Doesn't mean it's not happening." Dean says softly. Castiel moves closer and Dean feels the brush of lips and stubble against his temple. Castiel wraps himself around him slowly, warm and sinuous. There's nothing he can say that will make Dean's worries, his discontent go away. He holds him like that for a long time.

"I'm sorry." Dean mutters, pulling Castiel gently into his lap and wrapping his arms around him.

"I get it, I really do." Castiel goes limp in his embrace, relaxing into him. "You know you can make FLOWS, right?"

There's a brief scuffle before Dean lowers Castiel into the mess of overturned board and tiles, kissing his way down his chest, pulling aside the soft cotton of his shirt to get at his skin. Castiel spreads his legs wider, nudging Dean between them, frowning when the other man shakes his head, pulling back a little.

"Dean?"

"I want you, inside of me." And the way Cas's eyes darken at that is completely worth the flutter of apprehension he feels. "you said that's what you want."

"It is...if that's ok?" Castiel looks up at him, hand stroking his chest absently. Dean nods and sits back on his heels.

"So, how do you want me?" Castiel contemplates him for a moment, then sets about arranging him.

He strips him down, then removes his own clothes and follows Dean's directions to the new bottle of lubricant in the bathroom cabinet. A small amount of work later he has three fingers buried in him.

"It's been so long since I did this on someone else." Castiel's fingers slide in and out again, stretching and curling. On his hands and knees Dean trembles. Castiel licks the base of his spine, nipping against the bone. "How're you doing?" Dean whimpers, thrusting back on three fingers without a thought for the fact that he's been straight all his life, and now he's on his knees, waiting for another man to fuck him. Castiel removes his fingers and sits back, watching Dean's hips rock, his naked back arching.

"OK" his voice is soft and under it Dean can hear the slick of lube on skin as Castiel works himself. "This is going to hurt, but not for long." Dean swallows, twitching nervously when he feels the blunt pressure of Castiel resting against his hole. Castiel's hands soothe his back, rubbing gentle circles. "I'm going to go slowly." He presses in and groans, low and rough, because it's either Dean or just the rush of taking someone again, but it's tighter, hotter than he remembers.

Dean's breath catches every time he rocks forwards, and true to his word he goes slowly. It's torture, pure, amazing torment that lights up every nerve. With Dean twitching underneath him, rolling his hips and clenching, _clenching _like he's trying to kill him. When he's fully seated he rests his forehead against Dean as best he can, bent over and straining. Dean pants desperately, knees aching and wanting to move so badly he almost loses it.

"Cas" his voice cracks. The burn's receding now, and he just feels full, pressed down and wide open. Castiel drags back a little, thrusting forwards with a hiss. Steadily he sets a pace, rocking, shifting until he has Dean moaning from the pressure. A strong hand presses Dean's back, pushing him downwards forcefully and tugging his hips up. Dean thrusts back at him and Castiel's fingers knot in his hair. This is a new thing for them, up until now he's always seen Cas as compliant, weirdly feminine. Now the only word to describe this is rutting, hard and deep and close. Sweat drips from Castiel onto the curve of Dean's back, running down towards his bent head. His face is nearly touching the floor, it would be if Castiel didn't have such a tight hold on him. Inarticulate grunts, rough curses and all the encouragement he can muster falls from his mouth, eyes squeezed shut as his orgasm builds, and builds and...

Castiel stills.

"Fuck, Don't **stop**..." Dean shifts back, hard. "pleaseplease...Cas?"

He pulls out with an abruptness that makes Dean wince and burn with sharp pain. He sags to the floor, turning to look at Castiel, sweat slicked, chest flushed, eyes bright and cock still almost blood purple with arousal...who isn't looking at him.

Because he's looking at the door.

Dean turns, jerking up off the floor and looking up at Lisa, who stares back, aghast and speechless.


	11. Chapter 11

"Dean" her voice comes out with the numbness of someone working up to a full on shout. "What...what the fuck is this?"

The front door falls closed behind her and Dean vaguely remembers not locking it when Castiel arrived. Her eyes dart between him and Castiel, who has dragged a blanket from the couch and tossed it over his lap, he throws another at Dean who covers himself gratefully, they're both sheened in sweat, Castiel smudged with lube and glowing with exertion, Dean can feel his skin burning, the phantom pressure of Castiel lingering inside of him, pre-come and lubricant slowly making their way out.

"Dean" Lisa's sharp voice brings him back from his horrified contemplation of what they must look like, of what this must look like. Ugly and wrong and filthy. "Do you have anything to say? Anything at all." She swallows, disgust evident in her face, a wronged-ness that makes him flinch. "Because when you told me to come here, I thought it was...I didn't think I'd find you like this..." She gestures to them, to Castiel's hunched body, careful hickeys decorating his pale skin. "This is...fucked up."

"Lisa...can you give us a minute." Dean feels at a disadvantage, having been discovered with Castiel inside of him, and now sitting naked amidst fallen scrabble tiles and crumpled clothing.

"Fine just...get him out of here and put some clothes on." She waves her hand at him and paces towards the kitchen.

"If you want me to leave, I'll just...go." Castiel looks small and weak again, and Dean has to fight hard to remember him just minutes ago, holding him down, controlling and strong.

"He has paid you, right?" Lisa hovers in the doorway, waiting for Castiel to get himself together and leave. "So, if you don't mind..."

And just like that he's a whore again. Castiel locks himself up internally, willing to do this, to _be _this – James, if that's what Dean requires of him.

"Cas... stay, please?" It's said too softly for Lisa to hear, and Dean can't quite look at him, but Castiel senses the conflict in him, and is glad that even under Lisa's gaze Dean hasn't quite forgotten him.

"Alright." Castiel drops his blanket and recovers his pants, handing Dean his before he begins to clothe himself. Lisa turns her back, sitting at the tiny breakfast table with her arms folded. Dean sits down opposite her and Castiel leans against the counter behind him.

"Why is he still here?" Lisa watches Castiel with curiosity and distaste. "Christ Dean you couldn't find another whore in a city this big? It just had to be James?"

"Castiel" they say almost simultaneously. Dean weary, Castiel blank. "James is my middle name." Castiel adds. "and I'm staying."

Lisa gives him a long searching look.

"What are you doing with him Dean?" She asks eventually. "I mean...I know I went to him... and now you're...paying to fuck him too? Why? God , when did you even..." She closes her eyes. "I don't know where to start with this."

"I'm not...paying him." Dean says quietly, hands on the table, eyes on his hands. "Not anymore, anyway."

"So you're...what is this?" her voice is quiet, incredulous. "He's a whore, Dean."

"Don't call him that." He feels the gentle touch of Castiel's hand on his shoulder, telling him it doesn't matter.

"It's true."

"It's a fucking insult." Dean's voice is dangerously low. "So don't, call him that."

Her eyes are wide, doe like with unasked questions and confusion.

"You're not even gay." She shakes her head. "You're not even...or is this why, I mean you lost interest in me..." The question in her voice is obvious and it makes Dean angrier than he probably has any right to be.

"That is nothing to do with this."

"It has _everything_ to do with..."

"No it doesn't! You cheated on me, we ended." He grates out. "But I'd already met Castiel, you knew that at least. We met because you went to him."

"So it's ok for you to disown me for one mistake, and then choose to be with someone who fucks other women, other men, for money."

Dead silence reigns over them.

Castiel's hand moves as he lays his arm over Dean's shoulders. Dean closes his eyes and leans into the slight pressure, gathering himself for the next wave of this attack.

"I realise I can only speak for myself...but, I am grateful for the inconsistency." Castiel says quietly. Lisa turns her eyes to him for the first time since she'd walked into the apartment.

"You're screwing my husband and you're glad he hasn't compared you to me?...you cold son of a bitch."

It makes Dean angry, on Castiel's behalf that Lisa can say these things to him after having paid him for sex. The insults, the hostility as so surprising from his formerly polite and sensitive (and soon to be ex) -wife.

"Lisa" Dean rubs a hand over his face. "I'm not your husband, this isn't your home...and who I choose to sleep with is not your business." He looks at her with as much stony resistance as he can muster. "We can talk about the baby, about the divorce...but you don't get to pretend any of this" he indicates her righteously indignant stance and set expression, "Is out of concern for me. This has always been about you."

"I hope you're pleased with yourself _Castiel" _She gets up stiffly and looks at them, Dean still looking at her without an ounce of care and Castiel with his arm over his shoulders, heart in his throat with worry. His fingers tighten on Dean, but he says nothing. Only thinks that he doesn't want to lose him, not like this.

"You do not get to win this by saying I cheated first." She spits at Dean. "This is...wrong, on so many levels I don't even want think about." Her expression hardens. "and everyone, is going to know it."

She storms towards the front door.

"Lisa!" Dean shouts after her, but the door bangs shut and she's gone, taking secrecy and any hope Dean had of not screwing up the rest of his life, with her. "Fuck" He drops his head into his hand. "I'm sorry Cas."

Castiel sits down next to him."I have no idea what to do."

"Prepare for the inevitable shit storm." Dean looks up at him. "She'll do it, probably speed dialling everyone I know as we...shit, Sam..." his eyes widen, "and my parents."

"I'm sorry." Castiel closes his eyes for a second, marshalling all his restraint. "I suppose...if we stop, there'd be no evidence to substantiate..."

"Cas, don't even think of throwing yourself on that sword." Dean's arm slides around his waist, pulling him into a rough embrace. "When it happens it happens...I'm not going to lose you over it, especially not now." He rests his head against Castiel's shoulder. "I'm glad you stayed."

"I'm glad you wanted me to."

The living room is still a mess of vaguely musk scented blankets and spilled game pieces. Dean locks the front door and sets the chain, then leads Castiel towards the bedroom. He lets Castiel take the left side of the bed and lies against his back, thinking absently that an hour ago Castiel was inside of him, and it was possibly the best he's ever felt.

They sleep curled up around each other, each worrying what the next few days would bring.


	12. Chapter 12

_Sooo many updates to write, so few hours in the day. _

Castiel is not a morning person.

This is the first thing Dean learns about him from actual experience, and he hordes the information greedily.

Castiel is warm and loose next to him in bed, oblivious and relaxed until the phone starts to ring. He growls into the pillow and waves a hand impotently in the direction of the noise like he's searching for an alarm to smash or his cell to throw. Dean slips out of bed and picks up the phone, going into the living room and sitting on the couch.

"Dean, what the hell?"

Caller ID says Sam, but his voice is several octaves too high to be instantly recognisable. Dean scrubs a hand over his face and remembers the previous day, Lisa and the dull feeling he'd had upon falling asleep that his life was about to get turned inside out and scrubbed raw.

"Sam?"

"Yeah, remember me, your brother? Thought you'd have the sense to call me before I had to hear this crap from Lisa, of all people."

"She called you already then."

"Yeah, woke me up at ten last night to give me the gory details." Dean inwardly sighs, only Sam would think ten was late at night. "Please tell me this is just part of the divorce thing? You catch her cheating, she tells everyone she saw you with a hooker."

"Castiel. His names Castiel." Dean says, by way of confession.

Sam is silent for about thirty seconds.

"It's too early for this." He huffs. "Dean, who is Castiel?"

"He's a...well, he's the escort Lisa was seeing. He's kind of the reason I found out she was cheating." He feels the need to add more, to explain the convoluted mess that led him to this point, to Castiel sleeping in his bed and Dean never wanting him to leave. "He's a good man Sam, better than me anyway."

"How many times have you met him?"

"A few...I guess more than a few."

"Are you...Christ, are you having sex with him, Dean?" Sam gets the question out in blocks, obviously hating that he has to ask.

"Yes. Since the first time we met...Sammy..."

"Your marriage imploded a couple of months ago and now you're seeing a hooker? Like all the time? That's...that's not healthy Dean, you need space to get over Lisa, to get some perspective." He sounds concerned more than angry and it makes Dean happier than it should given the situation. He assembles the parts of the story that he can tell Sam and tries to make sense of them.

"I'm not exactly paying him...anymore." Dean stumbles "I got to like him, and I think he likes me...so we're just...we're together. I think."

"So Lisa just walked in on 'date night'?" Sam's voice is sharp with knowledge. "She was pretty explicit about what she saw you guys doing Dean."

"Which is probably all true, but...I like him Sam...and having him here is good. It's good for both of us."

Sam pauses.

"Do I get to meet him?" his voice is carefully diplomatic.

"If he wants to, then yes." Dean sighs. "Sam...I don't know what to do with this right now...I think I love the guy and...and that...that changes everything for me."

"I'm coming down to see you tomorrow." Sam says gently. "I mean this is...I want to hear it from you, in person."

"Ok...you're ok? we're ok?"

"I'm you brother Dean, pretty much nothing is going to make me hate you." He sighs. "But call Mom and Dad? Please, before Lisa gets a chance."

"Shit."

"Yeah, hang up, deep breath, call them."

Dean says goodbye to Sam and starts dialling his parents number.

He hates Lisa for making him do this, for dragging him out into the open, naked and vulnerable. It's bad enough that she saw him with Cas, saw what he allowed Castiel to do to him, what he was loving even as it happened...now she's transferred the image to everyone he knows. He's essentially underneath Castiel, sweating, hard, so, so close...and in front of his friends, family and colleagues.

All he can think is that he wouldn't have done the same to her.

He hopes he wouldn't have done the same.

His Mom picks up on the second ring.

"Hello, Winchester residence."

"Mom?"

The line crackles in silence, and in the background he hears his Dad curse, a muffled "Is that Dean?" and his Mom shushing him.

They know.

"Hey honey." Her voice is the same as it always is, it's his Mom, soft and warm and pretty much the epitome of all the good things he wants in this life. "Pretty early for you isn't it?"

"Have you heard from Lisa?" He needs to get this out in the open, buried under their conversation it's unbearable.

"She...ummm, sweetie she called last night..." He can almost picture his Mom lowering her head, eyes on the telephone wire twisted around her fingers, his Dad listening in over his morning coffee, boots ready under the kitchen table. "She seemed to think...well, she wanted to tell us that..." Abandoning her attempts at diplomacy she sighs. "Dean, what she told us about that man...please tell me it isn't true."

"She shouldn't have called you...but yes, I guess if she told you she saw me with another man, that's true." His voice is quiet, small and young despite his efforts to hide it.

He doesn't see Castiel, bleary from sleep and wearing wrinkled sweat pants, standing uncertainly in the doorway to the bedroom, unable to walk away now he knows what's being discussed.

"She said he's a prostitute." Mary continues gently, he remembers that tone from his childhood, _Are you sure you didn't do something to Sam? Because he seems to think..._

"He is."

"You're paying him for being with you?...honey, I thought I raised you better than that." The silence is an accusatory, 'waiting for justification' silence. "Taking advantage of a desperate person, do you know why he does this, how he came to be where he is?"

"It's not like that." Dean sighs. "I...I care about him, Mom, I know that sounds incredibly twisted...I know you must feel like I'm the worst person alive right now...but I think I...I know, that I want to be with him. I just don't know where that leaves me."

"Were you going to tell us?"

"When I'd...I really have no idea, I just wanted to call, since Lisa's decided to tell everyone. I already called Sam."

"You're Father's going to need a little time on this one Dean." His mother sounds tired, but warm, still managing to show affection despite the shitty situation he's landed them in. Dean can tell from this that his Father is no longer in the room. "I'm sorry, but..."

"I know, and just...tell him I'm sorry, I didn't want you to find out this way."

"I know you didn't honey...it's ok." An edge of curiosity creeps into his mother's voice and suddenly it's like having a normal conversation. "So...what's he like?"

"Shorter than me...dark hair, smart, funny and probably the nicest person I know." He closes his eyes. "I kinda feel like I don't deserve him."

"I'm glad you're happy, Dean." And it's genuine. Dean wonders how the hell he ended up with such an awesome family, because they're taking this, for the most part, far better than he expected. "Your Father will be to, eventually."

"Thanks Mom."

Dean hangs up the phone and stares at it.

Castiel coughs a little and comes further into the room.

"Morning." Dean opens his legs slightly, pulling Castiel down to sit between them, hugging him close.

"Good morning." Castiel's voice is scratchy, matching the stubble sprouting along his jaw. "I take it Lisa's threat wasn't an empty one?"

"No, apparently she got everyone last night, 'least the people who matter." Dean rubs his cheek against Castiel's, listening to the rumbling hum of satisfaction that radiates through the other man. "We'll be ok though." Castiel turns into Dean's embrace and holds him back.

"We'll be ok." He agrees.


	13. Chapter 13

_Couple of twists and plotty things coming up in the next few chapters and Cas and Dean may actually (gasp) leave the apartment – if you see them coming you can have some lasagne. (for why must it always be cookies?) _

Dean gets fired on Sunday.

His boss calls to say everyone is now well aware of his...'proclivities' and that theirs is a family company with a good image to maintain. Despite Dean's threats to take action for unfair dismissal the other man doesn't waver. Dean isn't being fired for being gay, he's being fired because of who he's with. Relations with a prostitute, especially such a blatant relationship, would reflect negatively on the company's health.

Dean knows for a fact that his boss is having an affair with his secretary, and that two of the three seniors at his firm regularly call 'escorts' and meet them at the office. Hell, one of the executives was sentenced for interfering with his nephew and the company kept a lid on that all through the court case.

Everyone knows these things, from Dean to the guy in the mail room. But no one says anything about it.

And now suddenly him seeing Castiel is the last straw?

"You do this, and I'm not going quietly." Dean promises vehemently.

"Mr Winchester, our decision is final." Uriel just sounds bored. "Do your worst, I doubt we'll notice." Dean is left with a dial tone and his own impotent rage.

"They fired me." He tells Castiel as he shuffles back into bed.

"Because of me." Castiel looks mildly upset by this.

"Because of Lisa." Dean stresses. "It's not like they would have found out any other way."

"You were going to keep me a secret forever?" Castiel points out. "Eventually you'd have had to tell people...if this were to become serious."

"Yeah, my parents, Sam...not the assholes who write my pay check and sling me all their paperwork." Dean draws Castiel up against him, nuzzling behind his ear. "You matter, and my family matter – Uriel? Not so high on my list of friends."

"Dean..." Castiel wriggles around to face him, face set like he's trying to work out the best way to phrase something. "I think...I think I need to quit my job."

Dean freezes for a second.

"You know I wouldn't ask you to do that. You don't want saving, I don't want to interfere."

"I want to quit." Castiel kisses him. "and maybe it would be best, for me, for us, if I did." Dean strokes his thighs through the thin material of his borrowed pyjamas. "besides...I so rarely get good clients, too many people like Crowley...not enough Gabriels."

Dean stiffens.

"Gabriel's?"

"You've met him. Short, blond, slightly over friendly?" Castiel shifts against him, missing the pressure of stroking hands. "He stopped paying me for sex a while ago, he still calls though, for company I suppose."

"You like him?"

"He's...interesting, nicer than most." Castiel smiles to himself. "He likes you."

"You told him about me?" Dean relaxes a little, the perceived threat fading as Castiel squirms in his lap.

"Mmmmhmmm" Castiel's eyes are closed. "He talks about his partner all the time, only fair to share." He wriggles and finds Dean hard, pressed into the small of his back. "He's the reason I can quit... he offered me a job."

"As..." his concern mounts again.

"As something I can't tell you about until he comes through...I don't want to jinx it." He strokes Dean's length through the fabric of his sweats. "But it's nothing bad, I promise."

"Good" Dean mumbles, leaning up into the touch. "If you're happy...I'm definitely happy." Castiel tugs down the waistband of his sweats, his touch skin on skin and almost painfully good. Dean groans and Castiel nips at his pulse, breathing against his neck.

"Cas?" he mutters softly.

"Mmm?"

"What we did before...the other night?"

Castiel freezes, back tightening under the sweep of Dean's hand.

Dean strokes Castiel's hair. "You liked it, didn't you?" Castiel nods under the weight of Dean's palm, his breath coming harsh and quick, on the edge of losing control, his cowed posture doing nothing to alleviate the sense that he's waiting, ready to pounce as soon as Dean releases him.

"I liked it." Dean shudders slightly, muscles twitching as Castiel's hands find his hips, gripping tightly. "You're stronger than I thought you were, I don't think I could've stopped you if I tried."

It's clearly the right thing to say, after years of clients pushing him into a submissive, happy to please role, Castiel is ready to grab back every ounce of control he's given up, and then some.

Castiel pulls him down the bed, turning him easily onto his stomach and tugging his pants down and off in one jerk. He parts Dean's legs just roughly enough to make his breath hitch, fingers finding his entrance and rubbing it possessively.

"Lube." Castiel's voice comes as a low growl. Dean fumbles for the bottle, tossing it down the bed. Castiel pops the cap and presses an incongruously gentle, open mouthed kiss to the inside of Dean's thigh.

"You know exactly what you're doing to me, don't you?" He says, half amused, half frustrated.

A slick finger breaches him and Dean forgets how to respond.

Somehow he doesn't think he's ever going to get tired of Castiel holding him down and groaning over him, thrusting hard enough to make him shiver, gripping hard enough to bruise. Castiel uses him like a whore, but talks to him, moves into him like a lover.

Dean lies spread beneath him, dick rutting into the worn cotton of the sheets, skin on fire and dripping with Castiel's sweat, mingling with his own. He can feel the perfect slide of the other man inside of him, pulsing and twitching without his control, the rough breach of his head and the silk of his shaft over and over until all Dean can do is whine and fist the sheets, his face burning with the effort, stomach muscles tightening with every thrust.

Castiel's forehead touches against his back and Dean jumps and the pressure, clenching involuntarily until Castiel moans, deep and low in his throat.

"Oh...my...Fuck. Please...fucking...Stay...Still, Dean." His fingers dig into his hips and shoulder, holding him at the angle Castiel wants, striking deep and hard. He groans into the sweat slicked skin of Dean's back. "I'm...trying...to concentrate."

It's torturous and it goes on past the brink of what Dean thinks he can endure. He's exhausted and slack and so hard it's starting to fucking _hurt, _but Castiel seems content to keep it up just that little bit longer every time Dean begs him to please just _finish him off. _Any move he makes to endanger Castiel's tenuous control over himself is punished with a couple of minutes of the slowest, shallowest thrusts he can manage, avoiding giving him pressure where he needs it, neglecting his prostate and the one outlet he has for the burning tension knotted throughout his body.

He's shaking and begging, beyond incoherent, by the time Castiel shoves a hand underneath him and tugs him off, releasing with a pained, shuddering, moan as Dean spills across his hand. He slumps over him, still embedded about as far as he could get, toes curled into the carpet the only thing keeping him steady the whole time they were together.

Dean whimpers, channel fluttering around the intrusion, now softer, sliding in a slick of semen and lube. Castiel chokes off a groan and reluctantly frees himself, flopping onto the sweat drenched sheets beside him.

Dean can't really blame him for falling asleep, as he's unconscious moments later.


	14. Chapter 14

Dean takes advantage of his new unemployment to wake up late, go through the want-ads with Castiel and then get ready for lunch with his brother.

Castiel is possibly the most nervous Dean's ever seen him, twitching the sleeves of his suit coat and messing with the buttons on his white shirt, top button done up, undone, two undone, back to one again.

"He's going to like you." Dean soothes his shoulders, tense and small boned like a bird. "He's Sam. He's like, physically incapable of hating anyone."

"I haven't made the best impression so far." Castiel mutters and Dean knows he's thinking about Lisa, about what Sam already knows of their relationship. And given the choice, no, Dean probably wouldn't have led with stories of his and Cas's sex life, but the decision had been made for them and they were just going to have to live with that.

"Well you're going to make the best second impression it is possible to make whilst still being human." Dean buttons his own shirt. "You'll see."

They're slated to meet Sam at a fairly nice restaurant across town and Dean drives them there, Castiel fidgeting and drumming his fingers for the whole drive.

Sam sees his brother before Castiel. Dean looks much like he did when he was still living with Lisa, maybe a little thinner, a little lighter in his mood too, like he's not thinking much of anything important and he's just happy to be wherever he happens to be at any given moment.

Dean looks like he's relaxed for the first time in a while.

Sam's sitting at the table already, so he gets a good view of Dean entering the restaurant and talking to the host, surrendering his jacket and checking the reservation. He also gets a good look at the guy who's standing next to him. He's pale, shorter than Dean, which isn't exactly a quality so much as a given. Longish dark hair and open features, skinny and holding himself stiffly beneath his dark suit and open collar white shirt.

Sam hadn't given a lot of thought to Dean's type, but he'd assumed he'd be a lot like Dean himself, maybe blond, casual and strong. He realises that he's surprised, and has no idea why the idea of his brother falling for another man is not in itself overly weird, but that he should fall for this kind of guy is.

The guy doesn't look like a whore, in fact if Sam were presented with the two of them he'd probably think Dean was the prostitute.

Which is a whole new uncomfortable thought. Thanks brain.

"Sammy?" Dean waves slightly as he approaches the table. "Seriously, one day you're going to tune out and stay that way."

"Hello to you too Dean." Sam stands up and turns to the other man. "Castiel, right?" He extends his hand slightly awkwardly, and Castiel pauses for a moment before shaking it.

"It's a pleasure." He says and Sam's thrown, because that's a big voice for such a little dude. He looks him in the eye and smiles, seeing Castiel's small smile of relief.

They sit down and go over their menus in awkward silence. Sam can't help but keep looking it Castiel, this is his brother's first boyfriend, and Sam's getting some insight into Dean's preferences, something so intimate it feels wrong for it to be taking place in a restaurant with other people milling around and eating lunch.

"Sam, quit staring at him, he's not a cockatoo." Dean doesn't look up from his menu but Sam flushes all the same, especially when Castiel meets his eye (and Jesus that's a lot of blue) his brow pinched with nerves.

"So...how've you been?" Sam tries. Dean smirks.

"This is kinda awkward isn't it?" Castiel huffs a small laugh and Sam allows himself to smile. "Ok Sam...well, I'm currently unemployed, my soon to be ex-wife is pregnant, I'm screwing up the first meeting of my new..." he pauses. "of Cas, with my brother...and I'm think of having the pasta." He takes a gulp of wine. "and you?" he gestures with the glass. Sam ignores him.

"You got fired?"

"Because apparently I'm bad for the clean cut image of a company full of pervs and psychos." Dean waves it off. "Glad to be out."

Sam digests this, realises he has no response to it except to offer legal advice that Dean won't take, and turns to Castiel.

"and uh...Castiel, I guess, same question?"

"I'm well." Castiel is polite to a fault. "and yourself?"

"Can't complain."

Another long, awkward silence fills the space around them

"So...you're an escort?"

"Jesus Sam! Did they not teach you subtlety at college?"

Castiel relaxes visibly.

"Yes I am...though I'm leaving my current occupation."

"Really? Any particular reason?" Sam's tone doesn't tell of any discomfort or disgust, which Castiel finds endearing. Three people in the world are not disgusted with his profession. It's good to know.

"A growing distaste for its particulars."

"Sorry for leaving you...with each other." Dean sighs. "I'm going to the rest room."

Castiel licks his lips as soon as Dean is out of sight, laying his hands carefully on either side of his place setting. He looks suddenly not just nervous, but scared.

"You don't remember me, do you?"


	15. Chapter 15

_Damn I feel evil, but I wrote that last line and thought...you know what? I'll just leave it there. Then I cackled so loudly my housemate said I needed help._

"What?" Sam's shock must have shown on his face, edged with growing horror because no, he had no idea what Castiel was talking about, but he could tell it wasn't going to be good. If they'd met, then that could really only mean one thing...and Sam couldn't work out which was worse, sleeping with a hooker who turned out to be the love of your brother's life...or not remembering that you'd done it.

"I asked if you remembered..." Castiel's eyes are fixed on the table, shoulders hunched slightly, protectively.

"No. No...Castiel we haven't met." He shakes his head vehemently. "I'd remember..."

"You were preoccupied." Castiel says quietly, his throat dry.

"When? And what...no I can't know that..." Sam closes his eyes. "Dean. Oh God."

"This doesn't need to affect him, though I doubt it would, even if he knew." Castiel's tone is smooth and Sam's throat tightens, how can he be so cool, so callous as to assume this wouldn't hurt Dean?

"You'd lie to him?"

"I'd consider it your business, and not mine to broadcast." Castiel answers carefully. "Given recent events I've adjusted my policy on honesty."

"Even when it involves sleeping with your boyfriend's brother?" Sam actually feels a wave of nausea. "Yeah, I see why that would complicate this thing you two have going on."

Castiel looks at him suddenly, the full weight of his gaze a powerful punch to Sam's attitude.

"You're Ruby's husband, correct?" Sam just looks confused. "I've seen your picture." Castiel continues voice low and emotionless. "Ruby made use of my services...she actually had an appointment booked for today which I was unable to cater to...because of this meeting."

"Oh...oh shit." Sam whispers. "I'm..."

"We have never had sex, Samuel." Castiel punctuates the words harshly. "and had we at any point done so I would have disclosed that fact to your brother." His tone softens and when his eyes meet Sam's there's no anger there, just calm conviction. "I wouldn't...I don't wish to hurt him. And I'm sorry that this has hurt you, revealing my clients to their partners seems to be becoming a habit of mine, unfortunately." He sighs. "I didn't want to risk you suddenly recognising me."

"We met...when?"

"A few months ago, you came home early from an engagement and...I said I was a neighbour, that I'd just stopped by for...umm..." His brow furrows.

"Coffee." Sam remembers now, coming home to find a stranger in his house, with his wife and being reassured by the guys casual demeanour, his blank politeness. Ruby must have put him up to it, or maybe it was just part of the service.

"I'm sorry, Sam." Castiel seems genuinely aggrieved.

"No I'm...I knew, I've known for a while that she was seeing someone." Sam shakes his head. "I'm sorry I went off at you...can't believe I said that stuff."

"It's understandable." Castiel looks a little dejected. "I'd hoped to make a better second impression; I don't know what you must think of me."

"It's ok, so we both suck at this...no big deal, I'm pretty sure this is a special situation." Sam smiles nervously.

"It's happened to me twice in the last three months." Castiel says blankly, and Sam can't help but laugh.

"What's funny?" Dean takes his seat and presses a quick kiss to the side of Castiel's face.

"Oh you know...life." Castiel smiles slightly, then turns briskly back to the serious business of ordering. "Chicken or fish?" he says, like it's the biggest dichotomy since Good vs Evil.

Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam, something to the effect of 'What? He's my cute little wacko'. Sam internally revises his first impression – there is nothing about this guy that doesn't suit his brother.

"How're Mom and Dad?" Dean asks too casually.

"Waiting for my report." Sam gives his order to the waiter when he circles round to them. "They're curious about who you're dating...well, Mom is...Dad just,"

"Wants to kill me?" Dean's smile is hollow. "Kinda figured."

"He's getting used to the idea, when he meets Cas he'll have to like him."

"Thank you." Castiel says politely. "The Cas thing's catching on." He mutters to Dean.

"Told you it would, no one likes a long name." Castiel rolls his eyes. Sam grins, the kind of smile that makes Dean doubt his brother's genius. "So..." Dean snaps back to the conversation. "How's the missus?" He widens his eyes a little, mainly because he's never really liked Ruby and finds her especially appalling in all of Sam's stories. Sam flushes.

"Well...we're probably getting divorced as soon as I get home...so, surprised, I would imagine." He takes a sip of wine. "this is good, isn't it?"

Castiel nods and takes a sip himself. Dean looks at them both like they're crazy.

"You're ditching Ruby?" he slumps back into his seat. "Good to know I started a trend." He says, without humour.

Sam and Castiel share a look, Castiel nods imperceptibly, giving him the go ahead.

"Actually...while you were gone me and Cas got to talking...turns out we've met before."

Dean freezes for a second.

"If you tell me, what you better not be about to tell me...I will puke...no offence Cas."

"Ruby is a client of mine." Castiel says, poker face back in play. "I recognised Sam from the pictures in his home."

"That sly bitch!" Sam jumps a little, Dean looks thunderous, Castiel just looks surprised. "How could she do that to you?" He looks across at Sam. "You ok?"

"Yeah, I sort of suspected...are you, ok?" Sam catches Dean's eye and nods discretely at Castiel, who blinks as if just remembering that this situation actually involves him.

"Sam, shockingly I've noticed what Castiel does for a living." He says dead pan. "and he was sleeping with Lisa when we met."

Sam blanches.

"Not actually...get your mind out of wherever it's gone." Dean grimaces. "Though that would even things up a little."

"More people seeing me have sex, is not something I would appreciate." Castiel says, just as the waiter comes to the table with their food. To his credit he doesn't bat and eye, just lays down their plates, smiles, and whisks back to the kitchen.

This is pretty much the weirdest lunch Sam's ever had.

"So...this is fun." Dean smiles. "We should do this again." Castiel nods and Sam feels a wave of affection for his brother and the weird guy he's decided to settle down with.

"How about tomorrow? Dinner at your place...you'll have to give me the address." Sam suggests.

"It's a date" Dean quips.

"Actually...would you mind if I brought someone, just someone from work...well not strictly work, but that's how we met, originally."

"The infamous Jess?"

"How do you know about..."

"Mom" Dean cuts him off. "It's been how many years? The woman can't keep a secret Sammy, learn from past mistakes...but sure, you can bring a non-date-type-work-person."

Castiel listens to Dean and his brother, trying hard not to smile, and sort of wishing he'd ordered the chicken. He wonders what it would be like, introducing Dean to Michael, to Lucifer? But if he thinks of that he must also think of explaining his job, his life for the last few years. He considers whether it would be worth it, to add a few more people to this table.


	16. Chapter 16

Together Dean and Castiel manage to bring together something resembling lasagne. It's the first time they've cooked anything together and Dean can't help but look at it like it's the first hint of their actually having a relationship. This is real, not just some depressing, pity fuck – but an actually, normal relationship.

"I've officially broken with the agency." Castiel says, apropos of nothing, while they're working on the salad. "I called them and quit, no more clients."

"How do you feel about that?" Dean keeps his eyes on the lettuce.

"Like it was a big part of my life, and now it's gone." Castiel slices tomatoes with sociopathic focus. "But it wasn't a particularly good part of my life...and now I don't have to sleep with people I'd rather not...no more call outs at three am...no more hand jobs...no more Viagra." He muses, unaware of the appalled look Dean's turned his way.

"Seriously?"

"Mmmm?...oh, occupational hazard, too many clients in one day..." he trails off. "Well, it doesn't matter now does it?"

"No, I guess it doesn't." And Dean becomes aware that now Castiel is just...Castiel-the-normal-guy, and not Castiel-the-escort-hooker- Bambie-type-rent boy.

Which is kind of the best thing that's happened in a while. He tugs Castiel away from the half prepared salad and pushes him up against the counter, dropping to his knees and opening Castiel's slacks in one easy motion.

Castiel grips the counter with both hands, arching back as Dean tugs him out of his underwear, mouthing him to hardness and pressing two fingers just shy of his entrance, tracing the tense responsive skin.

Someone knocks on the front door.

"I hate Sam." Dean growls, mouth still pressed to the swell of Castiel's now very insistent dick. "I really hate Sam." Castiel whimpers. Dean takes his hand from the counter and presses it down on his Castiel's erection.

"Think about me." He orders, encouraging the fingers beneath his own to grip tighter and begin to stroke.

"You. Utter. Bastard." Castiel groans through gritted teeth as Dean ducks out of the kitchen, leaving Castiel to sort himself out. "You...Uh..." He bends over his hand, working himself fast and hard, other hand groping for a towel, half formed plans of vengeance circling his (fastly becoming incoherent) mind.

Dean snaps the chain open, undoes the latch and opens the door to see Sam in his semi-formal, college graduate get up. Sam hands him a bottle of wine, and ignores Dean's raised eyebrow at his khaki pants.

"Hey, thought it would take me longer to find the place...where's Cas?" Sam hands him the bottle, looking around the living room curiously.

Dean fights back about fourteen different puns to do with 'taking care of something in the kitchen' and man, did it feel good to joke about sex after months of pained revelations.

"He's finishing up the salad, dude's way better at cooking than me."

"Well, that's not that hard is it?" Sam points out.

"Bitch...where's Jess anyway? Thought you were celebrating Ruby's imminent departure with some not-really-a-date-type-date-action." Dean frowns. "God that sounded girly."

Castiel breezes in from the kitchen looking a little flushed, and Dean catches his glare before Castiel looks away, nodding in Sam's direction.

"Hello Sam."

"Everything in hand out there?" Dean couldn't hold out anymore.

"Everything is fine." He takes the wine from Dean and turns back to Sam. "I'll get some glasses...is your friend here as well?"

Sam blushes. Dean hasn't seen Sam blush since he was fourteen and finally worked out what his dick was for, only to have the concept of locking doors escape him.

"The thing is...when I said it isn't a date? I meant it _really _isn't a date..."

"Sam, what do you..."

"Hey, you were right, parking was a total biatch...hello." Gabriel hops into view behind Sam and catches sight of Castiel, his eyebrows wriggling skywards.

"Dean this is Gabriel, my firm represented his a couple of months ago."

"And you probably will again if Bobby can't play nice with the other partners." Gabriel's smile is easy, but there's a small amount of tension in his frame that Dean can't ignore.

"This is my brother Dean and his partner Castiel." Sam closes the door and Gabriel shoots Castiel a pleading look.

"Actually Gabriel and I have already met." Castiel says.

"Really?" Sam's tone sharpens, his body stiffening and Dean kind of wants to tackle Castiel to the ground and cover his mouth because the look Sam gave Gabriel when he showed up was nothing short of loving, no matter what Sam himself wants to say about it.

"Gabriel took an idea to his boss on my behalf." Castiel says his eyes not leaving Gabriel's. "He's provided me with an alternative career, for which I'm very grateful."

Gabriel almost visibly relaxes.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone at the office that you've got a heart under there." Sam taps Gabriel's chest and his eyes lighten considerably.

"Better not."

Dean has to turn away from the sight of his brother so obviously flirting, but he's hiding a grin all the same. He follows Castiel's retreating back into the kitchen.

"So, you're not telling Sam about Gabriel?"

"I've told him all I care to." Castiel fluffs the salad noncommittally. "he's perfectly happy, why would I ruin that? Besides, it hardly matters, Gabriel stopped seeing me around the time he met Sam."

"Your morals are a little shaky you know that?" Dean puts plates on the counter.

"Well I was a whore." Castiel shrugs.

"Would you have told me about Lisa?" Dean asks suddenly. "If...I don't know, if I'd been happy, if you'd known who I was?"

"If you'd been happy...really happy with your wife...I wouldn't have told you the truth either." Castiel murmurs seriously.

He slides an arm around Dean's waist, shifting until their chest's touch, his breath warm on the side of his face.

"Is it wrong of me to be glad that you weren't?"

"No..." Dean closes his eyes and rests his forehead on Castiel's shoulder.

"Good." Castiel whispers.

"Guys? You need any help out there?" Sam calls from the living room, Gabriel rumbles something that makes Sam laugh and Dean shakes his head, almost drawing away before Castiel's hand touches his face.

"You are going to pay, for leaving me to myself out here." Castiel promises, hand nudging Dean's groin before he goes back to serving up their dinner.


	17. Chapter 17

_Lisa, the lawyer said you were going for a scan this week...I'd like to talk to you, if that's alright? Maybe find out how the baby's doing?_

_Hey, it's Dean again...I'm not pissed at you for what you did, ok? Or not so pissed that I can't see why you did it. Call it even or whatever...you have the number for my place._

_Lisa...if you don't want me involved, fine. Don't say I didn't try. _

"Dean?" Castiel pads into the living room just as Dean leaves what feels like the hundredth message on Lisa's machine. He sets the receiver down and turns around.

"Still no answer?"

"No...guess she really doesn't want to talk, which...I get, it's not like I want to speak to her much anyway...it's just..."

"The baby, I know." Castiel perches on the edge of the couch, Indian style. "I don't have children...but, I can imagine."

"I feel like the worst person on the face of the earth right now." Dean looks down at the paperwork spread out on the table beside the phone. Paperwork for alimony and child support, and as usual the spike or resentment at Lisa travels through his body – she'd outed him to his boss and lost him his job, now he had to give her money anyway. For the tenth time since Sam mentioned it he's grateful that he has a brother with legal experience – Uriel isn't going to see it coming.

"To err is human." Castiel delivers this bit of wisdom with a deep frown and a serious set to his jaw that Dean finds kind of hilarious. "To forgive..."

"Divine, yeah I know."

"No, I think forgiveness would be a difficult for anyone." Castiel stretches. "I should shower, I've got a meeting with Gabriel today."

"About..."

"Nice try." Castiel calls back on his way to the shower.

Dean is just about to make himself some breakfast when the phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Dean?" Lisa sounds tired and sharp at the same time.

"Hey, did you...I guess you got my messages?"

"Stop calling."

"Lisa..."

"Stop calling me Dean. I mean it." He knows from the way she's breathing that her forehead will be knotted with anger, her eyes shining as she tries not to cry. "You've made it pretty clear that you're with that...man...now." her voice stumbles, making each word an accusation. "If you think I'm letting you near my son..."

"Son." The word is punched out of him. "It's a boy?"

"Dean..."

"No...you can't just cut me out because of who I'm with...Jesus after the last few months that's the last thing you should be pissed about." He rubs a hand over his face. "I know I should have called, I should have said something, anything...but you can't do this, please don't do this."

"Sign the divorce papers, that's the last you'll have to do with me."

"Lisa..."

"No, you're...you're wrong, so wrong and I'm not letting you near my baby."

"Because suddenly I'm the lowest sonofabitch around?" Dean inhales sharply. "You slept with Cas too. You told my Mom about us, in fucking detail Lisa. Don't pull the innocent, holier than thou gay ass bullshit." He flinches at his own cursing, knowing that Lisa's probably going to slam the phone down and shut him out for good.

"I'm his mother." She says instead. "I'm the woman you're divorcing to be with a prostitute...that makes me...it's my decision, and no one's going to question it."

"Lisa...if you do this...I will fight you, you realise that?" Dean doesn't mean it as a threat, but he refuses to lose his son to a game weighted against him.

"Just...stop calling, Dean." The dead phone buzzes into his ear.

Part of him thinks that he deserves this, he didn't call Lisa or take the pregnancy into consideration, so now he's lost his child, which might possibly be the only child he will ever have.

But as in most of the things that have happened to him over the last few months, there are levels of intricate arguments as to who to blame. Right now he just wants everything to be equal – if Lisa admits she's been wrong they'll balance, two sides of the same failure.

Another thing to add to Sam's list of legal work.

Castiel returns from his meeting with Gabriel quietly optimistic and holding a slim black folder. He's aware that Dean hasn't had the best day, in fact since the phone call from Lisa he's been quiet and subdued, still he dredges up enough awareness to ask Castiel how his day went.

"Good." Castiel sets down the folder and traces its cover with eager fingers. "I can tell you about it now, I think, now that it's a sure thing."

"All ears." Dean slides a bottle of beer across the table to him. Castiel opens the beer, then the folder, sliding a printed sheet of paper across to him.

_Angel – Confessions of an escort. _

"Thankfully Gabriel wasn't given the task of titling it, but he did mock up a few things for the presentation."

"You're writing a book? About what you used to do?" Dean sips his own beer, wondering how he feels about this. He has to come down on the side of anything that doesn't end with Castiel sleeping with strangers though, so inevitably that wins out.

"Gabriel liked the idea. It's all anonymous obviously, both for me and the clients. They want the first draft by the end of the month."

"Cas that's great." Dean looks down at the proposed front cover mock ups, pale blue with black wings photographed in detail.

"Is it alright with you if I include you?" Castiel asks seriously.

"Why would you..."

"You're important." He says, without any trace of humour. "Very important."

"Of course you can." Dean kisses him gently. "But I get to pick my fake name."

**As you can tell from the fact that I'm writing fanfiction – I know dick about the publishing industry. And not a whole lot about relationships or pregnancy either, here is my poetic licence, check it at your leisure. **


	18. Chapter 18

It's been a long time coming, and yet he still finds himself trying to reason a way out of it.

The phone rings in his ear, Castiel waits, and then it's too late to go back.

"Hello?"

"Michael?"

"Castiel! It's good to hear from you, how is my brother doing?"

This is why it's so hard to talk to Michael about his life, his work – because his brother is so proud of him for becoming independent and successful in his own right. He thinks that Castiel is a night-porter at a hospital, saving for a degree and the chance to write like he always wanted. It hurts that, whilst he has finally done it, is about to become a published author, his brother can't know about it, without knowing what he's been doing in all the years since he left home.

He's stuck between wanting his brother to be as proud as he is that he's risen above it, and fearing his reaction when he realises how far down he'd sunk to maintain himself.

It's a knife edge he doesn't want to walk.

"Actually, I have some news."

"Really?" Michael waits politely for Castiel to continue.

"I really do want to tell you in person."

"Is it...did something happen? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine" Castiel's breath catches in his chest. "I've...I've met someone."

"Castiel! That's fantastic. What's he like? Or...she?" Michael hedges uncertainly and Castiel smiles. He's been incredibly vague about his sexuality, in fact beyond the few dates he had with boys before he left home his brothers know nothing about his personal life.

"He's nice." There isn't really a way to describe Dean.

"Informative." His brother teases drily. "I take it that isn't the news?"

"No it's not...it's difficult." He sighs. "You aren't going to appreciate it."

"Castiel." His brother's voice turns serious. "Anything you have to tell me...I'll at least hear you out. I can't promise I'll like it, or understand. But I'll listen, and you're my brother, even if you make me angry I'll still love you."

Michael isn't usually so open with his emotions, even such a bitten off speech is the most Castiel has gotten since he came out and received an awkward hug and a declaration that 'safe sex should be the only sex you have'. Much preferable to Lucifer's rolled eyes and muttered insistence that he'd always known there was 'something' about him.

Michael is his favourite brother.

"I'll keep that in mind." He mutters.

"Good. I have a break in my schedule next weekend...would you like me to fly down?"

"That would be excellent, I'll set up a room at the apartment." He doesn't add that Michael may well want to stay in a hotel once he learns the truth about what has happened in that apartment. Not that he could find a hotel Castiel hasn't stayed in for at least an hour, maybe less.

"Will I meet Dean? While I'm there?" He asks carefully.

"If you want to, then yes, I'd love for you to meet." Castiel feels a wavering hope that maybe everything will work out.

"Great. Ok, I'll book tickets. See you then."

They say their goodbyes and Castiel is left trying to organise the words he needs to explain himself.

God it's too difficult. He can say the words. 'I worked as a prostitute.' But then there are the other things. The fact that worked for both men and women. The things he's done which Michael may well imagine, and worse besides. The money, the diseases (two bouts of Chlamydia, one of crabs, and he counted himself lucky that it wasn't more) the clients and the things they'd done. He has scars from Alistair, from being tied and whipped. He has near permanent calluses on his knees from frequent rug burn, odd faded white brands from handcuffs and a freakishly high sex drive that came from experiencing far too much stimulation.

Every part of it is him, and he doesn't resent it, doesn't look down on his marks. He's written the first half of a book documenting each one, from his first trick to his last. But now he has to stand in front of his brother and justify them.

That night Dean comes home to apple pie, Castiel having embraced the concept of stress baking. They eat on the couch in front of a movie neither of them are watching, Dean's hand rubbing his thigh and combining comfort with possession so easily that Castiel wonders at how open Dean is now. How much he's embraced about the peculiarities of their relationship.

"I love you, you know that?" He says, eyes on the tiny figure of a shoeless John McClain. Dean turns to him, surprise and pleasure mapping over his face.

"I love you too." He strokes the back of Castiel's neck. "Bedroom?"

"I owe you retribution." Castiel squirms under the light pressure. "You left me..." Dean rubs him through the thick fabric of his jeans, heat and friction fraying his conviction.

"Your call." Dean feigns disinterest, but as he lowers Castiel's zipper his breathing roughens. "But I am planning to make it up to you." His fingers cover the soft flesh and feel the beginnings of his arousal take shape. "All those things you did." Castiel tenses but the other mans tone is awed, patient. "You must have something you've been wanting to try." Castiel wriggles, arches as Dean's mouth touches him, he can't think, can't grab at his thoughts long enough to make sense of them. "Cas?" he teases. "You thinking?"

"I'm..." Castiel pushes him away, flushed and hard. He tugs his shirt over his head, loosening his jeans and dropping them to the floor. "Clothes, off."

"Yes, Sir." Dean smirks, dragging his shirt up and thrusting his jeans off. Castiel nudges him to the floor, lying him out on his side. He sits next to him, nibbling his lip.

"Cas?"

"Are you ok with...is it alright? That I want this?" At Dean's curious expression he lowers himself so that is feet are beside Dean's head, his mouth level with his hard half cock. Dean sucks in a short breath.

"Jesus." He lowers himself down, lying fully beside Castiel and cupping a hand around his thigh. "If you show me..."

"It's easy. If you do what I do." Castiel swallows noisily. "just...it's something no one ever pays for...and I thought..." Castiel licks the head of Dean's fast growing erection, whimpering as Dean returns the favour.

He's at a slight disadvantage to Castiel, mainly because the other man has enough experience to deep throat easily, but Dean tries his best. Sucking and stroking with his tongue the way Cas has shown him. Strong, long fingers squeeze the flesh of his ass, rubbing slow circles and parting him smoothly. Dean returns the gesture, feeling the wet, fluttering heat of Castiel's throat around him and he laps at the other mans pre-come and rubs the pucker of his entrance. Slick, glutinous sounds and moans muffled in flesh are the only sounds in the room. Both of them slowly coming undone, bucking into each others mouths and sucking greedily. Dean whimpers around the weight of Castiel as the man cups his balls, stroking the sensitive flesh behind before pulling off of his shaft to suck his own fingers hard.

Dean mewls at the loss of the heat, but then Castiel's taking him in again, slick fingers pressing behind and he barely has time to register the feeling before he's coming down the other mans throat, white flare of his orgasm mingling with the burn from Castiel's fingers. Dean sucks valiantly, swirling his tongue over his head before Castiel's hips jump in his grip and he glances up to see the smaller mans flushed face slack with pleasure, before saltiness floods over his tongue. He swallows most of it, then Castiel twists around and kisses the rest from him, collapsing into his chest.

"Sonofa..." Dean can't finish the thought, let alone the words, wrapping his arms around the satiated form of the other man. "That was..."

"Mmm..." Castiel kisses him, open mouthed and flushed. "Definitely."

"I should work you up more often." Dean nuzzles the top of Castiel's head.

_Updates shall come! I've spread myself a little thin, fic wise, and so I'm trying to alternate and update them all regularly._


	19. Chapter 19

_For the record – Michael is the younger John Winchester model, just because he's age appropriate and sort of looks a bit like Cas. (Also in an earlier chapter I think I referred to Ruby's husband as Michael...that was mistake.)_

Michael's plane is late, which gives Castiel a lot of time to worry.

That morning he and Dean had their first fight.

And it was pretty much entirely his fault.

He'd felt incredibly bad, still did in fact, that Lisa was holding her baby over Dean as a kind of punishment for being with him. He knew it was mostly because Lisa was hurt that Dean wouldn't, couldn't forgive her, and yet had taken up with Castiel himself, but also perhaps a little of her supposed reason was valid. That was, perhaps Lisa was right to be worried about exposing her child to a homosexual relationship in which one of the partners was an ex-prostitute and other was still coping with the changed to his life.

He didn't condone the homophobia but he could understand how Lisa's anger and humiliation might provoke such a reaction.

So he'd gone to see her.

He still didn't really understand what made him do it. He'd wanted to speak with her himself, perhaps to present his own conformity, his normality as a reassurance.

In retrospect a poor choice, but he had trusted a lot to Lisa's readiness to behave as an adult.

And the fact that there were no more unpleasant surprises coming.

Really he should have known better.

Lisa opened the door and stared at him in silence. She really was very beautiful, Castiel noticed it uneasily, unable to avoid comparing himself.

"What do you want?" she asks, voice low but spiked with shock and annoyance.

"I wanted to talk to you...about Dean, and the baby."

She looks at him a moment longer, chewing on the inside of her cheek, before stepping aside and letting him in.

Sitting in what had once been Dean's house, opposite the woman who was still his wife, but only in legal terms, and that for not much longer, Castiel tried to remain calm.

"So, do you want to say whatever you came to say?" The 'and then get the hell out of here' is implied. Castiel takes a deep breath.

"I'm not working as an escort anymore." He states.

Lisa blinks, surprised.

"What does that have to do with..."

"I wanted to put any fears you may have about me being around your child to rest." Castiel holds up a hand to forestall any argument. "and to ask if you would at least consider allowing Dean to participate in the life of the baby."

"So he sent you here to...God he has no shame whatsoever..." Lisa shakes her head, smiling bitterly.

"Dean doesn't know that I'm here." Castiel remains unaffected by the outburst. "But I'm worried that the rift between the two of you will become permanent, something I'm sure neither of you wants."

"Where do you get the nerve to...sermonize on functional relationships?" Lisa slaps a hand down on the counter between them. "You're dating someone who paid you for sex."

"I'm not going to defend the validity of my relationship to you." Castiel says, evenly. "But Dean is...not what you seem to think he is, I believe you know better than to think he would be an inappropriate influence on your child."

Lisa's shoulders drop and her hands clench on the counter.

"Jesus Christ." She sighs. "Dean needs to stay out of this...he can't..."

Castiel waits.

"If I tell you something, do you promise you won't tell him?" She asks, finally.

"I can't promise that." Castiel thinks for a moment. "But depending on what it is...I might keep it to myself."

"I guess that's the best I'm going to get." She looks down at her hands. "I'm not...as pregnant as I should be."

Castiel's expression flickers.

"What do you mean?"

"I...I had a scan and it turns out I'm not as far along as I would be...if..."

"If Dean was the father." Castiel finishes. Jesus, he can't believe this. "So there was someone else? Before..."

"No." Lisa looks a little tearful, like the strain is finally getting to her. "Dean and I were trying...for a long time, but nothing and then...it just seemed like too good an opportunity to miss." At Castiel's pinched and confused expression she sighs. "One of the condoms we used was mine...I stuck a needle through it."

Castiel's eyes widen.

"You..." he can't decide which direction to go in, anger, disbelief, horror, despair...he can't really process what this means, why this latest in a long line of unpleasant surprises is the thing that hits him hardest.

He's having a son. A son Dean believes to be his.

"Dean can't find about this." Lisa says fiercely. "He already knows I cheated...I can't...I don't want him to think it was because we couldn't get pregnant, that I'd do this to him."

"How do you want to...how do you want to do this?" He asks.

"You and Dean can do whatever you want." She sighs. "I was...it's still twisted for me to think about but, fine, go ahead...but you both stay out of this. It's too mixed up now...I can't deal with either of you." She hugs he arms around herself. "Are you going to tell him?"

"No" Castiel murmurs. "No I won't."

"Thank you." Lisa looks up at him. "Now, can you...go? Please?"

Castiel leaves Lisa's home with the knowledge that he has to stop Dean from taking action against Lisa. Should they do they a DNA test...it would break Dean's heart to believe his wife had cheated on him with more than one man...and if he ever discovered that Castiel was the father...

Some discoveries were just too much for them to bear.

He has no choice but to sit Dean down and attempt to explain that , yes he had gone to see Lisa, and yes, he had been convinced that a custody battle would be futile.

His reaction was as expected.

"Cas...what the hell?" Dean exploded. "why would you...how can you say that?"

"It's a difficult battle, to gain rights in such a situation...Lisa has a lot of reasons why you shouldn't be given access and you don't have the money or the strength for that long a court battle." He feels like the devil saying it, mainly because it's true.

"The hell I don't, he's my son Cas!"

Castiel thinks about the son he'll never know, probably the only child that will be genetically his.

"I'm sorry...that's just how I see it."

"You know what? I've lost my wife, my home, my job and possibly my parents because of you." Dean grinds out. "So keep your fucking opinions to yourself."

He'd stormed out of Castiel's apartment, which they'd been getting ready for Michael's visit.

Castiel hadn't heard from him since.

The arrivals board flashed up his brother's flight number.

Just another thing to dread.


	20. Chapter 20

_I apologise for the amount of typos in the last instalment – clearly I was too tired._

"Castiel!" Michael strides across the arrivals hall, luggage slung over his shoulder. He looks every inch the man their father had once been, forever the golden boy of the family with his height, strong jaw and politely powerful grace. Castiel would have been envious of it had he not known Michael, as it was he was just happy to see his brother, and thoughts of comparison were far from his mind.

Castiel waves and Michael greets him with a heavy hand on his shoulder and a broad smile.

"How are you?"

"Good." Castiel feels a twinge of nerves so powerful it makes him feel sick. "Do you want to take a cab to mine?"

"Yes, if you don't mind."

Michael manages to keep Castiel elevated with small talk and easy questions about his wellbeing and the weather down here. Castiel checks his cell approximately twenty times throughout the journey, a fact which doesn't go unnoticed.

"Are you expecting a call?" Michael asks with mild interest.

"Dean and I had a fight." It hurts to say, but he has no one else to voice it to.

"I'm sorry to hear that." He leaves a careful pause. "Is everything alright?"

"Not really." Castiel grits out, watching the buildings pass the cab windows. "But...it will be." He grips the phone until it hurts, watching his knuckles turn white. He's given up everything for Dean, opened up far too much to not leave some serious scars if he's left like this.

"I hope so." Michael looks out of his own window.

They really aren't the most emotionally available family.

Michael coughs. "So...this news you wanted to tell me about..."

"When we're home." Castiel says quietly, the phone pressing a cruel line into his palm. "Just...I need to be...I need a minute."

"I understand."

"You will." He feels very tired suddenly, like the last of James left the building the minute he decided to tell everyone his secret. Now he's just Castiel again, awkward, shy and a virgin at eighteen. He can almost forget the intervening years of tricks and drunken one night stands, the lover's he's lost to his job, the clients and episodes of violence or infection.

He wishes Dean was there.

He leads Michael up the stairs with growing trepidation, knowing that he has to break into the truth somehow.

He really doesn't know what the first thing that goes through his mind is, when he sees the man on his doorstep.

"I was beginning to think you'd skipped out on me." He smiles. "Really Angel...how could you keep me waiting?" Alistair's voice is low and slick, Castiel feels the phantom burn of a dozen lash marks on his back, teeth against his throat and saliva spraying his flayed skin.

He's not a prostitute anymore. He's not taking appointments anymore. But Alistair has been to his apartment before, he knows where it is, could have been buzzed in by anyone...

But he's not thinking that, just fear, total blind fear like he felt being tied down and ripped apart. Confusion and sudden, piercing terror that THIS is how Michael is going to find out.

"Get. Out. Of. Here." He says, with as much strength and gravitas as he can dredge up. Alistair hooks a finger into his belt, unimpressed.

"But I'm paying...and really you should take it as a gracious compliment." He moves a little closer. "No one takes it quite like you."

"Castiel?" Michael has followed him up the final set of stairs and now stands frozen behind him.

"Busy then?" Alistair gives Michael the once over. "Well I do hate to share...but since you didn't answer my calls...and now this, well..." He tuts softly. Voice sing songing. "You're gonna look so pretty when I'm done marking you...my own personal angel, all opened up for me."

Castiel shudders, he can't suppress it.

"Castiel, what is this?" Michael glares at the other man like he's a combination psychotic and drunk, Alistair cocks an eyebrow.

"Hush your mouth, boy." He smiles his dangerous smile, the one Castiel has come to associate with sharp jabs in soft places, pain and humiliation. "We're all Johns here, enough of our pretty thing here to get everyone off...I'll see you Angel."

"No you won't" Castiel sounds weak, even to himself.

"You're very wrong about that." Alistair circles him, walking towards the stairs and passing too close for comfort. "and if you ignore my call again...too bad for you...and what's bad for you is usually a good time for me, as I'm sure you remember." He walked out into the stairwell without looking back.

Michael takes a second to process the scene in it's awful entirety. Castiel waits.

"Castiel...who the hell was that guy? Are you in some kind of...is he stalking you?"

"No." Castiel waits some more, watching the realisation swell between them like a wave in a septic tank, awful and unstoppable.

"He said...Johns? and..." Michael's face twists. "Was he paying you? Paying for..." He lets out a breath. "Did he pay you for sex...Castiel?" he asks falteringly.

"Can we...just get inside? Not do this in the hallway?" Castiel looks at the floor. Michael looks at him unable to erase the thought and unable to move with it weighing so heavily on his mind.

"Please Michael?" Castiel opens his front door, turning back to his brother.

"Castiel..." He doesn't move. "Castiel..." and suddenly he's there, arms wrapped so tightly around him that for a second Castiel is too stunned to respond, feeling his brother hug him tightly and bury his face in his shoulder. "Boy, what's happened to you?"

He didn't know his brother's compassion would be the thing to break him, but his eyes turn blurry and he can feel his throat thicken, tears welling up and burying themselves in the cotton of Michael's shirt.

They stand like that for what feels like an age, his brother refusing to let go, Castiel not wanting to be released. Finally Michael pulls away, picking up his discarded bag.

"I need you to explain this to me...and then I need you to forgive me."

"Michael...this wasn't your fault, how can you..."

"I'm your brother. Your older brother, point of fact, me and Luc...we're supposed to protect you, that's how it is, now that Father...now that they're both gone."

It's the most Castiel has ever heard his brother say on the subject of their parents.

"Michael, it was my choice, to leave you. My choice to live as I have." He opens the door wider. "Come inside."

Michael follows him into the apartment and Castiel leads him to the living room.

He's survived trial by fire; by rights he should feel better.

His phone remains stubbornly silent.


	21. Chapter 21

_People seem split on the whole 'Lisa was deliberately trying to get pregnant' issue. I agree that it would be stupid to have unprotected sex with a hooker, but then it would also be stupid to cheat on Dean...so I have no idea if she's lying or not (I'll work it out at some point.) _

Michael watches him from his seat on the other side of the couch.

"I still can't believe this." He says, finally.

Castiel has taken him through it, step by step. Leaving home, not being able to support himself, turning to escorting. The intervening years of lying and feeling quite bad about it. Meeting Dean, the book and his resignation.

Leaving out a detail which he should have known Michael would pounce upon.

"How did you meet Dean?" For every second of silence Michael's expression darkens. "Castiel..."

"He was a client." He admits. "But he's different he..."

"...paid you, for sex." Michael finishes. "Is that...healthy? to get involved with someone who would do that?"

"I love him." He says simply.

"Where did you meet him? On the street or..."

"His wife, also paid me...I was sleeping with her, and he came to confront me."

"Oh Castiel..." Michael looks appalled and upset.

"He was upset..."

"And your solution..." Michael gestures wordlessly. "Offering sex to someone isn't exactly..."

"Normal." Castiel clenches his fists. "I'm not normal, not really."

"You can't just relate to people by giving yourself to them." Michael says carefully. "I'm not...this isn't about me judging this, or you...but I'm worried about you, about what kind of man would engage a..."

"A prostitute." To his credit Michael doesn't wince at the word.

"That his wife was cheating on him with...it's unstable, it's not a rational thing to do."

"I don't think anyone would be rational in that situation...and I gladly gave him..." Castiel swallows. "I gave him the only thing he'd let me...I knew it wasn't a good idea...that it wasn't a 'healthy' thing to do, and I still did it."

"And now you love him." Michael sighs resignedly. "Does he love you?"

"I don't know." Castiel thinks of his phone, still silent. "I think he does."

"Is that enough?"

He's silent.

"Castiel?" His brother moves to sit beside him, holding him with one arm around his shoulders. "More than anything...I have never wanted to see you suffer, not like this. When I think of all you've had to do..." he closes his eyes. "I didn't protect you from that, from them...but I can in this, if this man isn't good enough for you, if he doesn't love you...I'll be there...you're not alone."

"He does." Castiel swallows, hoping that it's true. "But thank you, for this."

There's a sharp knock on the door.

"I that's the guy from before..." Michael growls, just as someone calls "Hey Castiel, you home?"

Castiel relaxes.

"I take it this is Dean?" Michael asks.

Castiel nods, not moving from his seat.

"Well...let him in then." Michael watches as Castiel goes to the front door and opens it. Dean looks like hell, tired and unshaven, but his face blazes with relief when he sees Castiel. Without thinking he enfolds him in a hug.

"Thank fuck." He mutters into the curve of his shoulder. "You have no idea, how worried I've been."

"What happened...Dean..?" Castiel wraps his own arms around the other man.

"Some guy called my apartment looking for you. I don't even know how he got my number, but he just left this message saying he'd try you at home, and I thought..." His arms squeeze tighter. "I mean, you told me about those scars, and I didn't know if it was the same guy so I..."

"So you came to check on me." Castiel runs a hand over Dean's hair, sticking up at odd angles as it is.

"and you're ok, which is..." He pulls away to look him in the eye. "Cas, I'm so sorry. I was pissed and...you're not the reason I've lost what I had...you're..." He struggles with it, relief and worry colliding and making it hard to find what he needs to say.

"I know." Castiel spares him the trouble. "I'm sorry for saying what I did."

Michael comes to stand just beyond them.

"Why don't you invite Dean in...I'll make us some coffee."

Dean frowns for a second, then his expression clears, replaced with guilt and anxiety.

"Right...your brother's here." He grimaces. "This really isn't the first impression I wanted to make."

"Unfortunately you've already made one." Michael isn't cruel, but he is as abrupt as Castiel himself can sometimes be, and Dean looks taken aback.

"He knows." Castiel lays a hand on Dean's arm. "Alistair was here when we got back, I didn't really have a choice."

Dean looks at Michael.

"I'm sorry."

Castiel tenses between the two of them, reaching to close the door behind Dean as he steps into the room.

"For soliciting my brother or that I had to hear about it?"

"Michael." Castiel warns, sometimes he can be too protective.

"No, it's..." Dean readies himself for conflict. "I have a brother, I'd probably lose my shit if I found out some guy had paid him for sex."

"Slightly different when it's hypothetical." Michael sighs. "He's happy with you, I hope you know that."

"I'm glad for that."

"If you hurt my brother, there really is nothing I can do about it." Michael folds his arms. "I can't hunt you down and make you pay for breaking my brother's heart, but it would be a terrible thing for him invest so much in you, especially given what he has been through, only for you to turn him away."

It's probably the most threatened Dean has ever felt by the 'family member warning' speech. That includes the introduction to Lisa's three brothers, owning thirty five guns and seventy nine acres in total.

"I'm not going to hurt him."

"You'd better not."

Castiel watches the two men stare each other down. They really are quite similar.

"So..." Michael says, relaxing his stern posture. "Tell me about your brother."

Castiel settles down beside Dean on the couch, listening to the exchange of family history and watching the tension slowly leave the two men sitting in front of him.

He wonders what'll happen when he has to introduce Sam and Lucifer.


	22. Chapter 22

Mary and John Winchester watch him with interest and apprehension (Mary) and outright mistrust (John).

In the wake of Michael's visit Dean had decided it would be wise to complete their 'family outing' by visiting his parents. Castiel had been understandably worried – he'd barely survived meeting Sam (ex-husband of ex-client, current boyfriend of ex-client) and reconciling with Michael (brother and surrogate father) he was not ready for Dean's parents, in-laws of Lisa (ex-client and scorned wife, current mother of Dean's child) and people who'd not been introduced to the idea of him in a very good light.

It seemed there wasn't a person he'd met so far who wasn't an ex-something because of him. Who hadn't lost or who didn't stand to lose something because of what he'd been.

In the minds of Mary and John he was Castiel – Prostitute, gay lover, adulterer by proxy and deviant by his practices. He was not prepared to defend himself, but mostly, he couldn't imagine how bad he would feel if these people, as important to Dean as they were, didn't like him, or worse, hated him.

What was worse was that they had every reason to, and that was why he remained silent under their respective gazes as he stood beside Dean on the porch of his family home, waiting for the hammer to fall.

"Mom, Dad, this is Castiel." Dean's hand rests in the small of his back.

Mary smiles. John's arm tightens around his wife's waist.

"I guess you'd better come in." He says, Mary looks pained at her husband's impoliteness.

"Honey, why don't you take Castiel into the living room? I'll make us some lunch." John retreats with one last glare, into the kitchen, where Mary follows a moment later.

"They hate me." Castiel murmurs, not unjustly in his opinion.

"They'll love you, just give it a shot." Dean leads Castiel through the house, towards the living room.

They eat slices of pies (excellent) and drink coffee (passable) in stony uncomfortable silence (unforgiving). That is until John leans back in his chair, hands folded in his denim clad lap, and glares down at the top of Castiel's head with open mistrust.

"You don't have anything, do you?" He asks eventually.

"Pardon me?" Castiel asks, just as Mary sighs, "John..."

"You don't have anything, like Hepatitis, the clap...AIDS?" John doesn't say it with venom, but slight suspicion is palpable in every word.

"No I don't." Castiel says evenly. "I get tested all the time...all negative."

"So you've never had any of 'em?" John pushes.

"I..." Castiel bites his lip. "I've had episodes of minor infection...it's not something I think appropriate to discuss over lunch."

"I'm done eating." John says plainly.

"Dad, enough." Dean growls. "Cas, you don't have to answer to him."

"As this may be the only occasion where we meet...which is now unsalvageable...I think this is the perfect time for me to answer any questions with total honesty." Castiel meets John Winchester's gaze without a flinch. "Anything else you care to ask?"

"Did you know my boy's wife was married when you slept with her?" John continues undaunted.

"Yes, and many others were as well. Men and women. It doesn't pay for me to turn away married clients."

"You ever try getting a real job, instead of grabbling ankle for paying psychos and shut ins?"

"Dad!" Dean half rises looking murderous, but Castiel's hand on his knee stops him.

"John, stop, right now." Mary grabs her husband's arm, but he ignores her.

"I've had real jobs, none of which offered the kind of steady income required to support myself." Castiel responds blankly. "I am however capable of doing so now."

"By telling the world how you screwed your way into a relationship with my son." John thunders, voice dangerously low.

"By telling my story." Castiel says, still not backing down.

"Cas, if you want to leave..." Dean lays a hand on his shoulder. "Dad, shut up...just.. Shut. Up."

"I hope you realise my boy's just been screwed over by his wife...he's not thinking clearly, and when he is...you should be prepared for the fallout." John continues doggedly.

"You think your son should leave me." Castiel keeps his tone even.

"Only that he probably will...and it'd be a good thing if he didn't leave with VD and a published rep for screwing male hookers."

There is a long, fraught pause, in which Mary's hand tightens on her husband's arm, her face livid and humiliated, Dean glowers murderously at his father, hands balled into fists and a vein standing out in his neck and John just...sits there, having said what he wanted to say, waiting.

"Fine." Says Castiel. And the other three people look at him with expressions ranging from shock to something which borders on admiration. "You're worried about your son, I understand that. But Dean does not need protecting from me – biologically, publically or personally. I can promise you that."

John stares at him for a long moment.

"Ok. If you're so sure." He gets up. "Mary, I'll be in the yard." And he leaves without a backwards glance.

"Castiel I am so sorry." Mary takes his hand. "John's very...set in his own opinions...I'm sure he'll come around..."

"I don't believe he will." Castiel says, kindly. "But I can't expect him to like me just because..." looks at Dean. "well...just because you do."

"I still can't believe he did that." Dean looks shocked by his father's systematic questioning.

"I've had worse." Castiel shrugs, but inside he's still reeling. "But...respect is at least something I can work with."

"That did not look like respect."Dean wraps an arm around his shoulders as his mother clears away the plates and excuses herself.

"I didn't back down. Neither did he. Mutual admittance of an impasse." He takes a sip from his coffee. "It's how I win all my pissing contests."

"Your hands are shaking." Dean says softly.

"I know." Castiel drops the cup back onto the table and feels the shocked tears start to well up unbidden. "He...he really _yelled _at me..." he laughs, and half sobs at the same time, he hates that this is his reaction to conflict, but he'd held it together as long as he could. Dean hugs him tighter.

"You were great...you were so great Cas." He presses a kiss to the top of his head. "Seriously, I was going to kill him."

"Glad I stopped you then." Castiel sniffs and manages to hold the next wave of tears at bay, he hates being yelled at, conflict of any stripe really.

John Winchester catches a glimpse of them through the window, then goes back to taking apart the old junker in the yard. He'll apologise, now that he knows...what he isn't sure, but he's established something about the stranger who's taken over his sons affections.

So he'll apologise.

When he's ready.


	23. Chapter 23

His parents put him up in his old room, Castiel is down the hall in Sam's. Dean bites down the impulse to say that he and Lisa shared his room on visits, even before they were married. Castiel seems to catch on to his displeasure, but shakes his head when Dean seems ready to make a point of it. Too much has already been hashed out and argued over, he needs to rest and he doesn't want another argument before he can do so.

He sits on Sam's former bed, looking at the national geographic posters of penguins and jungle flora, the heap of old computer parts and discarded console cartridges and the shelf of paperback mystery novels. Dean is down the hall, probably recovering from dinner, which while less outright unpleasant than lunch, had still been pretty uncomfortable. Mary tried her best to make up for her husband's silence, and John's one concession to conversation was to ask Castiel about his family.

Discussing his parents death was obviously not a good time for him, but he remained proud of his brothers for what they'd done for him, and what they had achieved despite the limits placed on them by having to raise their younger brother. He thinks this showed through his words, and John had not taken the issue further, returning his eyes to his plate with a gruff sound of approval.

He was loath to call it progress.

They'd also managed to skirt the topic of Lisa's pregnancy, but it was laying heavy on his mind, especially now he had time to think. In between confronting Michael, being accosted by Alistair, making up with Dean and meeting his parents, Castiel had allowed himself to forget the bombshell Lisa had dropped on him. He could not do so forever.

Lisa was pregnant with his child, probably nearing the end portion of her pregnancy even as he tried to forge some level of a relationship with Dean's family. He had to do something, though he was at a loss as to what.

He could tell Dean and face the fallout. He could attempt to have some level of input into his child's life and most likely be discovered and disowned by Dean. Finally, he could do what Lisa had asked of him, and keep his silence along with his distance.

He thought of the first time he'd seen Dean, crushed and confused and devastated. He didn't want to be the one to put that look back on his face, not when he'd been the one to remove it in the first place.

He makes his way down the hall and knocks on Dean's door. He opens it, now wearing his pyjama pants.

"Not the time for a booty call, Cas." He smiles anyway.

"I want to tell you something." He blurts it without really thinking.

"Something bad?"

"Yes." Dean frowns at him for a second, then draws him into the room by his arm.

"This something that just happened?"

Castiel shakes his head and Dean sits on his bed beneath a poster of Pamela Anderson. Castiel casts his eyes up at it, unable to identify the woman.

"Ok...what makes you want to tell me now?" He returns his attention to the matter at hand.

"With everything else I didn't really think about it enough to make a decision...and now I feel that if I don't tell you it will damage us more than if I tell you now."

"Scaring me a little here." Dean does indeed look worried, and also more than a little anxious.

"When I spoke with Lisa..."

"Cas, we talked about this..." Dean sighs, just as Castiel lets the words out in a rush "She said that I was the father."

"What...did you just say?" Dean looks at him like he's just lost his mind.

"I said..."

"I heard you...you're the baby's father? How did she even..." He shakes his head. "No, you know what, she'd find a way, she wanted a kid badly enough." He sighs again. "We both did." He looks at him disbelievingly. "She told you? Just like that?"

"She was afraid you'd insist on a paternity test." Castiel says quietly. "She didn't want you to find out and...get upset."

"So everyone's banded together to protect me and my fragile ego? That's nice...that's..." He huffs bitterly. "That's outstanding."

"Dean..."

"She must have known, all this time, I mean, we couldn't get pregnant while we were together and then what? As soon as we split it just magically takes?" He closes his eyes. "I'm such an idiot."

"You're not." Castiel sits beside him.

"I didn't notice my wife was seeing a hooker and I didn't realise she was having someone else's baby, that isn't a good sign for me intellectually." He snorts. "Plus Sam's apparently gay now and there's no way I saw that coming...this is all so much, too much to deal with while my life is still imploding."

"If you need some time...space, I understand." Castiel already feel like he will be devastated, but he can't take it back now.

"No, Cas, seriously, nothing is going to make me regret this. Not Lisa, not my boss, not my family and certainly not you." He drags them together in a rough hug. "But we need to deal with this...talk to Lisa and figure out what the hell she wants, and what you want."

"And you." Dean shrugs. "No, you matter in this as well. I wouldn't make any decision here without you weighing in, ok?" Dean nods and Castiel appears satisfied.

"Do your parents know about Sam and Gabriel?" he asks suddenly.

Dean groans and drops his head onto Castiel's shoulder.

Castiel takes that as a 'No'.


	24. Chapter 24

If Dean thought his stay with his parents couldn't get any worse, he was to be disappointed.

It's late on their second night, that day having passed in the blistering awkwardness of its predecessor, and he's lying upside down on his childhood bed, watching shitty cable TV with his feet resting on the wall.

So when he sees the footage, it takes a moment for him to ascribe familiarity to the two guys making out on screen.

When he recognises Sam he almost chokes on his own spit, rolling onto his front so fast he very nearly falls off of the bed.

Sam and Gabriel as frozen onscreen, a framed background image to the presenter of a celebrity gossip network, who's chatting excitedly about this 'latest development in the life of the infamous Gabriel Garrison.'

The picture shows Gabriel pressing Sam against a desk, possibly in his office, crowding close and standing between his knees. They're kissing fiercely and completely unaware that someone is taping them, presumably with a cell phone, judging by the grainy image.

He opens his door and almost slips on the rug in his efforts to reach Castiel as quick as possible.

Castiel is sitting up in bed, watching the same image on a different channel with a mixture of fascination and disgust.

"Do you think they know about this?" he ask, as Dean collapses on the end of the bed, watching yet another reporter babble about his brother being a mystery boy toy.

"Do you think my parents know about this?" Dean counters, and Castiel's eyes widen comically.

"Call Sam, call him now." He advises, flipping to another channel. Each gossip station features the story and Dean is inexplicably glad that for once the sudden bombshell is only tangentially related to him.

Dean scrabbles for his cell phone and speed dials Sam.

"Uhh...Dean? it's two a.m...what the fuck?" comes Sam's sleep weighted reply.

"Turn on channel 237"

"What...?"

"Just do it."

He waits.

"Holy mother of fuck." Sam breathes.

"Yeah...I take it you had no idea about this?" Dean kneads his forehead with one hand. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"How was I supposed to know someone was filming? I didn't even know Gabriel was that famous."

Dean's focus splits sharply between Sam's continued protests and what the presenter is saying now.

"_It was thought for some time that Mr Garrison had been frequenting an escort, and with the upcoming release of the life story of one such professional, we can only speculate as to the identity of this young man."_

Sam goes dead silent.

"Sammy..." Dean is still gaping at the television, Castiel biting his thumb nail in distress as he guesses what Sam's just heard.

"Is it true?" Sam asks, his voice is small, but sharp. "Gabriel and Castiel?"

"Sam..."

"Is it?" he demands.

"Yes but..."

Sam hangs up and Dean stares down at the phone in silence, then closes it with a sigh.

"I really hope Mom and Dad don't see it." He says quietly. "I don't think they could...fuck, I don't think I can handle this." He shakes his head. "He's my brother and he's just lost his wife to this...mess...now he's losing Gabriel too?"

"That would be his decision." Castiel says softly. "But I'm sorry, for my part in this."

"That's just it, you didn't do anything." Dean laughs without humour. "You were just...you were just doing your job, and somehow it's getting twisted up in everyone else's shit decisions."

"How much of this is actually about Sam?" Castiel hazards.

"Ok...so maybe this Lisa situation has me more messed up than I thought." Dean frowns. "I mean...how can you not be going crazy over losing your kid to a client?"

"Because I didn't want children...and, even if I'm going to have one, I think..." He sighs. "I think I would make a lousy Father...not just because of what I used to do...I'm just...I'm not together enough for this, and I don't want it enough to fight Lisa for my rights."

Dean lays an arm around his shoulders.

"I'm not going to tell you what you should want...but this might be the only child you ever have, biologically anyway. You should think about that." He sighs. "and hope that my parents never find out about you and Gabriel...and Gabriel and Sam, because they'll go..."

His phone rings. Dean checks the display and flicks it open.

"Hey Sam, listen, are you ok?..." he raises his eyebrows at Castiel, then frowns. "Fuck." Castiel mouths 'what?' at him.

"He just got a phone call from Mom. Her and Dad saw the bulletin before we did..." he listens to Sam talk for a few more seconds. "They're...they're not happy." He frowns. "Dad especially."

"Why haven't they said anything?" Castiel asks.

"Maybe they think we're asleep? Mom at lease wouldn't wake us up to drag all this out in the open." He grimaces. "Means they're probably waiting for morning."

"Shit." Mutters Castiel.

Dean closes his phone.

"And Sam's still mad at us for not telling him...he just wanted to give me the heads up." He shoves the phone into his pocket. "I don't think he knows how to be an ass."

"So...in the morning, your Dad's going to know, or at least have a pretty good idea...that I've slept with one of his sons for money...both of their spouses...and that Sam now has a boyfriend...who I have also slept with?"

Dean frowns.

"I don't think he knows you slept with Ruby."

"So it could still get worse?" Castiel grimaces. "Thanks."


	25. Chapter 25

_Shorty update I'm afraid, I should be writing for you know, by creative writing course, but this is so much more fun _

Morning dawns tense and with Castiel sitting edgily in the chair opposite the bed in Dean's room.

"Have you been there all night?" Dean grunts, trying to wake himself up enough to open both his eyes without wincing.

"Only a few hours." Castiel looks ragged, hair sticking up at odd angles and eyes shadowed almost black underneath. "At some point we should probably go downstairs."

"And say what? None of this is our fault."

Castiel frowns deeply.

"I mean it. Did you force Gabriel to sleep with you? No. Did you introduce him to Sam? No. Did you lie?..."

"Yes." Castiel points out stonily.

"But not to _them_, and only to Sam for a really good reason." Dean insists. He manages to crack both eyes all the way open and glare at Castiel properly. "So we can go down there and talk to my parents like adults, ok?"

"Ok." Castiel nods, not looking particularly enthused or convinced.

"And then we should check on Gabriel and Sam." Dean adds, "Because that's going to be a mess."

John is already sitting at the breakfast table when they make it downstairs. Mary is worryingly absent, which leaves them with only Dean's father, a mug of coffee and that mornings paper, open to the society pages. Castiel doesn't have to look down to see Gabriel and Sam's picture atop one of the columns.

"Your mother's still trying to get Sam on the phone." John Winchester stirs sugar into his coffee as if he wishes it great personal harm. "No luck so far." He thumps the cup back onto the table. "First I've got to hear about you turning queer from Lisa, now I see Sam getting felt up by a man almost my age on NATIONAL FUCKING TELEVISON?" His voice makes both of them jump. "What the hell is happening to this family Dean? Two divorces, one grandkid I'm never going to see and both of my sons carrying on with..." He gestures violently with a spoon "A hooker, ex-hooker – no offence." Castiel is surprised by that but covers it well. "And a cradle robbing corporate asshole?...who you apparently used to work for..." he points at Castiel. "What happened? You wanted a contract so badly you fixed them up?" He turns his glare on Dean. "And you? Where were you when Sammy decided to start dating the pervert?"

"I didn't know! I thought he was making a move on that chick from work, then he turned up with Gabe..."

"Don't 'Gabe' me, not in this house." He points the spoon at Dean threateningly, which would be funny if he didn't look murderous. "He's older than Sam, by far, and he's his boss!, his bosses, boss point of fact – you really think your brother's ok in a relationship like that? 'cos I don't."

"Mr Winchester, I know Gabriel and I don't think he's the kind of person to take advantage..."

"Really, you know him as a friend or as a client who paid to stick his dick in your mouth?" John challenges.

Dean clenches his hands into fists.

"Dad, don't do this again." He warns.

"I understand that I'm perhaps not the best person to judge his character." Castiel perseveres. "But Gabriel always struck me as intelligent, moral and incredibly kind...despite perhaps being a little juvenile."

"Doesn't mean he's to be trusted." John practically growls. "You think we let Sam marry Ruby, hell, let Dean marry Lisa, without thinking they were good people? They were decent girls and somehow both of them wound up with you."

"Which wasn't my fault." Castiel says mildly. "and people are apt to change, even if they commit to somebody else."

"I didn't want to believe it, when Lisa called us." John practically growls. "that my son would do something like that, with the man who screwed his wife? You think I'd know what my own son was capable of, but no. And now Sam?" He thunders. "Sam's a good boy and now, because of all this crap, I don't know who he is..."

"Well then perhaps you're just not a good judge of character." Castiel counters. "and I would suggest at least meeting him, after all, you invited me here, it would be only fair to extend him the same courtesy."

Dean's kind of worried that his Father's just going to tackle Castiel to the ground, drag him outside and lock him the trunk of one of the cars. But surprisingly he confines himself to a slight narrowing of his eyes and a tightening of his mouth.

"You could be right." He allows, eventually.

Castiel looks mildly relieved.

Dean thinks he's just witnessed a minor miracle.

"Don't get me wrong, you're some kind of fucked up kid, but you're not dumb." John looks down into the depths of his coffee. "You're probably not going to cheat on my son and...hell, Mary likes you." He gestures with his mug, "So...there goes my nation."

Silence reigns in the kitchen.

"Great...so..." Dean pulls a chair out for Castiel. "Pancakes?"


	26. Chapter 26

_This kind of came from nowhere, but I sort of like it, so I'm canonising it as the new chapter...that made sense right? But at least (at last) something good happens _

On the long drive back to Castiel's apartment Dean checks his cell for any messages from Sam. There aren't any, and he's distinctly concerned about his brother and how he's coping with this latest buffeting dose of bad news.

There are however three messages from the city hospital, which distract him almost instantly.

Lisa went into labour at three the previous morning, after falling on the stairs at home.

Castiel checks his phone and finds two messages, also from the hospital, and one from Gabriel, which he doesn't listen to.

They have more immediate concerns.

The messages (all five of them, which does little to alleviate Dean's panic) all assure him that Lisa is fine, or at least in no real danger, that she had given birth to a healthy baby boy, but that because of the fall she had a broken leg, and therefore needed someone to help her take care of the baby for a while.

Dean's starting to wonder if God is smiling on them in the most back handed way possible.

Parked in the hospital lot he looks over at Castiel.

"You don't have to see him if you don't want to, but..."

"I'll go." Castiel says, with conviction he doesn't feel.

Dean gets the sense that if he pushes it Castiel will break under the pressure, so instead he leads him into the hospital and they muddle through windowless corridors covered in posters and long, long, coloured arrows. The maternity ward is easily identifiable, thanks to all the pregnant and alternately, exhausted looking women with pink or blue balloons. That's the only way Dean's sure that they've made it.

Lisa is propped up in bed without any makeup on, which is the first time he's seen her barefaced in a while, since they stopped living together in fact. She looks tired and her leg is in a cast, but she smiles with relief when she sees them.

"Thank you for showing up...I thought you wouldn't come." She says, looking between the two of them awkwardly. "My Mom can't fly down for another week and...well, I needed someone to get my things from home and make sure the baby's doing ok...I mean the hospital can take care of him but I'd feel better if..."

"I know." Dean soothes, dropping into the chair beside her bed. "Scared the hell out of me, you know that?" it's true, he'd been worrying ever since he got the first message, and each subsequent one, no matter how polite and straightforward had only added to his concern.

Lisa looks up at Castiel. "Do you want to see him?"

Castiel blinks rapidly, and realises that his shock must show on his face because Lisa says, "I knew you probably wouldn't be able to keep it a secret...to be honest I'm kind of glad it's out. I've lied way too much...I'm sorry." This last she directs at Dean. "I never wanted it to end like this, everyone all angry and spiteful, especially not now."

"Having a kid softened you up then?" Dean jokes softly, and Lisa smiles beneath her softly curling hair.

"Something like that." She looks back at Castiel. "So, did you want to see him?"

Castiel looks a little lost, but Dean takes his hand gently.

"Why don't we both go?" he says, with a sideways glance to Lisa to check that it's ok, she nods.

Once they've found the infant ward and located the right room, they're left staring through a glass partition at rows of tiny crunched up babies in little plastic cribs, each with a little white hat on their head and a plastic bracelet with their information. A plastic sign on the end of one crib says 'Benjamin Braeden'.

"That's him." Dean points. "It's Lisa's maiden name." He explains, half turning towards Castiel, but he stops, seeing that the other man is leaning towards the glass, frowning like he can't decide if he's pleased or not.

The baby has a rough tuft of dark hair, black or brown it's hard to tell. But its eyes are the kind of blue that could only have come from Castiel, enormous and deep and anciently naive.

"He's got your eyes." Dean murmurs, slightly inanely

"He shouldn't" Castiel says, like his mouth is working but his eyes and mind are still wholly occupied with the sight of his son (Christ, his Son.) "It's a recessive gene."

"Maybe he just got lucky."

Castiel huffs a bitter laugh, Dean wraps an arm around his waist.

"Lisa'd probably let you see him...if you wanted." He murmurs.

Castiel gives a tight nod, like feels he should acknowledge this if not agree with it.

"He's really tiny." He says after a while, watching the tiny bundle of white blanket and angry red face twist in its sleep.

"They usually are." Dean presses a kiss to his shoulder. "You're a Dad."

"No I'm..."

Dean kisses the side of his neck.

"Yes you are..." he nuzzles behind his ear. "I'm happy for you."

"I'm sorry that it's not..." Castiel doesn't want to say 'yours' it just sounds too horrible, especially with the new baby only meters away, where Dean can see him and know that he has no claim on him at all.

"Doesn't matter." Dean sighs against his skin. "Ok, so it matters, but at least this way Lisa gets what she wants...and maybe it's what we need, one tiny thing with a bit of you and a bit of her... might keep us all in line."

"Like a treaty." Castiel closes his eyes for a second, feeling Dean so close and comforting, before opening them again to look at his son. "A treaty with really tiny fingers."

Dean chuckles softly against his neck.

"Exactly." He inches his fingers into Castiel's pockets. "and now I have to call Sam...tell him he's not-an-uncle officially now...gives me a reason to talk to him anyway."

"It'll work out." Castiel sighs.

"That's just the baby optimism talking...you know, like 'one day my kid's gonna be president', when really he's going to work in a soulless cubicle."

"I don't think he's going to want to follow in Daddy-Dean's footsteps." Castiel frowns "Though he probably shouldn't follow in mine either."

"Guess Lisa's holding down the career day fort solo." Dean quips morosely. "Yoga Teacher kind of trumps 'Unemployed office drone' and 'hooker'."

"Escort" Castiel corrects him automatically. It's easier to joke about these things than to take them seriously, though Dean aches inwardly at the possibility of some wile blue eyed kid calling him 'Daddy' and showing him terrible pictures of horses and Sam and stick people on fire.

But just for the moment, he can bear the pain, if it makes Castiel happy.


	27. Chapter 27

_In celebration of a cancelled class, have an update (FYI the story will be wrapping up before it hits thirty chapters – thanks a bunch for all the wonderful feedback of the past few months, and I'll see you at the finish line, please bring foil blankets and water). Anyway – on with the drama-lama. _

Castiel finally gets around to listening to Gabriel's message that evening at Dean's apartment.

Dean himself has been trying to get Sam on the phone for over an hour, but each time he's only gotten his voicemail. Agitated he'd called his mother, only to find out that she'd had no luck getting hold of his brother either. He finally gave up and decided to call out for pizza, turning to ask Castiel whether he wanted onions and noticing his wide eyed look as he clasped his phone to his ear.

"What is it?"

Castiel shushed him with a wave of his hand.

Dean mouthed "What is it?" and slapped his thigh irritably. Castiel put the phone on the table, set it to speakerphone and played the message over again.

"_Castiel? Hey, it's Gabriel...so, you might have seen the news coverage on me and Sam? Don't sweat over it, book's still coming out at the end of the month, nothing changes there. But Sam's kind of...epically pissed with me about lying to him about you, so I'm trying to fix that...which means I won't be around for the launch party on Friday because...well...I'm taking Sam to Paris...I know, I know, believe me, but he's kind of a girl, so it makes sense to...woo him, or whatever...just tell Dean not to worry and we'll be back when Sam forgives me...or when I get sick of pain au chocolat...which will never happen...bon soir."_

Castiel exits his voicemail.

"How..." Dean shakes his head. "You know what? No...I don't care anymore, he can take my brother to some ancient monuments, force feed him some French chocolate and Sam probably won't remember he has a brother, let alone that Gabriel lied to him about you." He smirks. "Dude knows his audience."

"They're lucky." Castiel says, spreading out on the couch. "I think if it were anyone else Gabriel would be screwed."

"Plus, gets them out of the country, no way for Dad to skin him if he's overseas." Dean muses.

"Hmmm...Dean?" Castiel sits up. "First night back home, no parents, no impending crisis...why are we talking about your brother ?"

Dean flicks the pizza menu to one side. "Good point."

Making out with Castiel on the couch like a pair of horny teenagers makes the time pass quite quickly, and as it turns out, there's no time to order pizza after all.

The next morning Dean wakes up blearily happy, owing in part to the naked man half sprawled over him and the half fuzzy memories of what said man had done to him the previous evening. He blames this unexpected boon of good will for what comes out of his mouth, because instead of the planned 'move your ass, sleepy.' He nudges the sleeping form and says,

"Cas?, Hey Cas? Move in with me?"

Castiel rolls over sluggishly, taking most of the blankets with him and remaining sound asleep.

But Dean mulls the idea over and in the end, stands by his half blissed out of his brain reasoning. Over breakfast he asks again, with a little more finesse, and as far as Castiel knows, this is the first time he's been propositioned that morning.

"So...I was thinking, we've been spending a lot of time at my place recently." Dean starts, handing over the bottle of ketchup just before Castiel reaches to grab it.

"Have we? Sorry." Castiel says automatically.

"No, it's great...it's sort of why I wanted to ask...would you like to move in with me?"

Castiel looks up at him, wide eyed, and accidently drenches his poor bacon in about a gallon of ketchup.

"Can I take that as a maybe?" Dean asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes." Castiel says.

"That a yes it's a maybe or an actual yes?"

"Yes, it's a yes." Castiel kicks him gently under the table. "I'd love to."

"Great." Dean takes a sip of coffee. "So...are you busy today? Because we could..."

Which is how they end up driving over to Castiel's apartment with a few armfuls of flat packed cardboard boxes, a roll of tape and the combined feeling that this is possibly the smoothest transition they've made to date.

Or at least, it is, until they reach the door of Castiel's neglected apartment.

Or at least, where the door used to be.

Castiel looks down at the splintered wood, ignoring Dean's whispered 'What the fuck?' from behind him darting instead into his apartment, finding only more ruin beyond the threshold. The walls of the hallways have been kicked to pieces, chunks of plaster covering the floor. The pictures have been dashed to pieces of glass and metal frame, his couch has been slashed to pieces, the cushions ripped oven and disgorging padding all over the floor.

In places it looks as if someone has just flailed at the walls, there are bloody finger prints on the paintwork as if someone beat the plaster with their bare hands. Books are shredded on the floor, some charred in a waste basket by the door, his CD's and DVD's are smashed to glittering shards, and as he opens the door to his bedroom he sees kitchen knives driven into the wood on the opposite side.

Dean follows him through the destruction, asking him if he's ok, if he wants to call the police. Castiel shakes his head dumbly, looking at his bed, torn open and burnt black in places, the whole room smelling of lighter fluid and stale urine.

Dean goes back into the living room to look over the damage again.

Only seconds before he hears Dean yell, Castiel realises that someone would have noticed if his apartment had been in this condition for days.

So it must have happened recently.

The thud of Dean's body hitting the floor in the living room raises Castiel to his feet in consternation. His aborted yell dying on his lips as Alistair appears in the doorway, knife in hand and a smile on his face.

"Hello Angel...where have you been?"


	28. Chapter 28

Castiel is rooted to the spot by the sight of Alistair, air enters his lungs in a rush,

"Dean!" he shouts, eyes never leaving the man in front of him. As he feared, there is no answer.

"He's not coming." Alistair moves a little closer, blue shirt spattered with blood that Castiel prays is from the man's torn knuckles and not from Dean. "You think I'd let us get interrupted?" he tuts, producing a knife from his back pocket. "You know I like to take my time."

Castiel feels his skin go cold, he remembers the last time he was with Alistair, the whip lashing against his skin, cutting it raw and bloody, the necklace of bruises around his throat from being choked when he'd tried to call a stop to it. His eyes go to the knife and Alistair's smile widens sickeningly.

He could beg him, but Alistair wouldn't let him go. He could fight, but he'd lose. Shout for help, but no one would hear.

Panic fills his throat with sand.

"You're wondering what I'm going to do to you..." he advances a little and Castiel can feel parts of his brain closing off,_ Castiel_ is being locked in a room somewhere and parts of James are taking over. The parts that can take pain and cruelty, the parts that don't care whether he lives or dies because James never had anything to live for but the next trick.

He backs up until his legs hit the burnt edge of the urine soaked mattress. Alistair raises the knife lazily and presses the point of it to the V of exposed skin at Castiel's shirt collar.

"Are you not scared of me, Beautiful?" he wonders out loud and Castiel keeps his eyes unfocused on the wall behind Alistair's head. The knife trails down, an insisted pressure that makes his heart skip a beat. Alistair pokes sharply and the knife jabs him, Castiel hisses and a thin trail of blood wets the front of his shirt.

Alistair shoves him onto the bed and cuts through the front of Castiel's shirt in one vicious swipe. Peeling the cotton sides away from his pale chest, he presses the knife to his bare skin, cold and lightning sharp, circling his way around a nipple and then letting the cold steel lance white hot pain across the nub, raising a line of blood and making Castiel cry out in startled pain.

Alistair crouches over him, legs on either side of Castiel's hips, humming softly as he traces the knife over his chest, digging and slicing when he feels Castiel least suspects it. He's chocking on fear and the stench of burning and urine and Alistair's excited sweat as it beads and falls onto him. Castiel's heart beats quick as a rabbit's, breath coming fast and eyes wide and scared like those of a cornered animal. He looks like what he is, prey.

"You know he's not coming, right?" Alistair says conversationally. "Your lover, he's either dead or still bleeding out...but I'm gonna cut you slowly anyway...let you feel your time running out..." He chuckles wetly. "You're going to last for hours, Angel face... thinking any minute now...any...minute...now..." he jabs on each word and Castiel feels pained tears well up in his eyes. "Someone's going to come and save you..." he leans down, foul breath and wet lips close to his ear and whispering poisonously. "But they're not."

He sinks the knife into the flesh of Castiel's hip.

He screams, his body moving of its own accord as it fights the searing pain, he can feel the blood wetting his shirt, can smell it. But Alistair just holds him down, not losing his perch on him even as he jerks the knife free and Castiel bucks, screaming again as the pain surges, then clenches his teeth and produces a horrible choking sound as he tries not to throw up or scream his throat bloody.

Alistair laughs, pressing one hand to the front of his own bloodstained brown pants and squeezing the bulge there.

"You always made such pretty sounds." He sighs, blade moving lightly again as Alistair shuffles back and opens Castiel's pants, pulling them down his legs, as pale and stiff as a dolls.

Castiel closes his eyes.

The knife trails over his thighs, inside and out, pricking lines of blood out on the white skin. He can feel the pressure of it, wincing at the sharp sting of each cut, followed by the wet sensation of blood, the burning throb of the open wound. His head feels cottony, and he hopes that he'll pass out before Alistair decides to get on top of him.

Though what does it matter really? If he's not leaving this bed alive.

Alistair presses the blade between his legs, the sharp edge driving alertness through his padded brain as it ticks against his balls, then behind them on the sensitive skin.

The wound in his hip blazes with pain and he whimpers despite himself.

Alistair deals him a blow to the face, cutting across the stinging flesh of his cheek so that blood runs down his face to pool in the hollow of his neck.

"Be quiet now Angel." Alistair admonishes, pushing Castiel's legs open. A hundred cuts blaze a net of fire over his skin and he knows that worse is coming, that Alistair will fuck him, then cut him, over and over until he gives out. He will not tire of it, he will not stop, he will not relent.

There will be no rescue.

In that instant he knows he's going to die here, and Castiel, the real him, comes screaming from the safe corner of his mind, and all he can think is...

_Ben...days old and wriggling under a hospital blanket, all pink fingers and wide blue eyes._

_Dean...dying somewhere on his living room floor, the heartbeat he'd felt against his chest that morning stopping forever._

He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling hot tears run out from under the closed lids, bites his lip, and waits to die.


	29. Chapter 29

_Ok, I have a lot of assignments to do, so updates will slow if I am to have any hope of passing my course. I will make this and Me and Mine, a priority, and I will hopefully finish both soon. So please be patient _

Castiel feels Alistair spread his thighs with hands that are too soft, too gentle to be part of this, part of this act. A hot rivulet of blood courses down the crease on his hip and falls between his legs. Castiel turns his head to one side, eyes closing over his blurring view of the room. He hears a rustle of cloth, Alistair opening his pants, and then the bed shifts with his added weight as he plants his hands on either side of Castiel's head.

"So good, so good..." Alistair shushes, one hand cupping his face as the other drops and roughly scrapes its nail over the pucker between his legs. "There's no one like you out there...I looked..." Castiel doesn't respond and Alistair doesn't care, he strokes his cheek softly. "I did, but no one does the things to me that you do..." He leans and licks the pursed lips of the man beneath him. "...I might have to keep you." He hisses it close to Castiel's ear and the smaller man moans softly despite himself, a despairing, pained sound. Alistair moves his fingers to Castiel's jugular and squeezes. "Would you like that Baby? Staying with me...?"

He can't breathe, there's a rushing in his ears that might be his heart or the blood in his brain.

Castiel opens his eyes despite himself.

Alistair bears down on him like a storm, filling his vision with sour breath and haggard features. He feels his eyes water, his chest burning with his need to breathe, one of his hands claws at the urine soaked mattress, fingers meeting damp clothing and something else. As he grasps it desperately, swinging his arm upwards towards Alistair's reddened face, he wonders vaguely what it is.

It doesn't matter.

The thing makes contact with Alistair and the pressure on him vanishes. That's all he cares about, the weight is gone, air floods his lungs and he curls on his side, gasping and shaking. It takes a few fear mangled seconds for him to get together enough strength to look at where Alistair has fallen, and to register that not all the blood that soaks his chest and is splashed across his face, is his own.

The knife, abandoned on the bed while Alistair manhandled him into position, is still buried in the man's throat. Blood runs out onto the floor and Castiel feels bile boil at the back of his throat.

_Dean..._

He staggers over the body and out into the hall, knees shaking and hot blood slick on his skin. He has to keep a hand on the wall to steady himself, feet catching on the floor, bare now that Alistair has relived him of his shoes, his pants lost somewhere on the bloody floor of the bedroom. Half naked he staggers over glass and splinters into the living room.

"Dean?" It comes out as a croak, his throat ruined. He tries again, looking frantically for a sign of Dean's presence. "Dean?"

"C...s..." He dives for the noise, finding Dean on the floor between the couch and the coffee table.

Dean's throat is wrapped with the cord torn from a lamp, one side of his head bloodied from where he was presumably struck down before being choked. He takes hold of the cord and carefully unwinds it, hearing Dean wince and cough as it stops biting into his neck. A hand clasps his thigh, pulling slightly at one of the cuts.

"Cas...?" Dean manages to get out.

Castiel drops down and holds onto him, burying his face in Dean's shirt and closing his eyes. The panic and pain that he'd managed to fight now return and he can't stop shaking, helpless and small and hopeless. Dean's arms go around him.

"S'ok..." he presses his face into Castiel's hair, mumbling softly, voice scratchy. "We need to call you an ambulance, ok?" Castiel just trembles against him. "Where's he?" When Castiel doesn't answer Dean just sighs, half lifting him carefully so that they can rest on the mostly intact half of the couch while he calls 911. Police and ambulance both on their way, he turns to assessing the damage done to Castiel, noticing for the first time that his pants are gone and that there is a larger amount of blood on him than he'd first thought in his fuzzy state.

"What did he do?" he looks down at Castiel, balled tightly against his side like a child. "Cas...what did he do?" Castiel shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut. Dean stops talking about it, hoping that the ambulance will be there soon. He has no idea if Alistair is unconscious or what, and he could come out of the bedroom any minute.

He's not going to leave Castiel for the few seconds it would take to check. He'd left him for a moment before, and that's how he'd wound up on the floor half choked and half concussed while in the other room...

He holds onto Castiel tightly. If Alistair woke up it would be the last glimpse of light he got before Dean killed him. The rest of his life, his parents, Sam, finally getting a settlement from Uriel? Could go to hell for all he cared, as long as he got his hands around that fuckers throat.

If he'd raped Castiel, Dean would skin him alive and burn him to ashes.

The violence of it is a raw taste in his mouth as he nuzzles Castiel's hair and tries to keep the bundled, shivering boy that used to be his grown lover, calm. Castiel's sobs and hacking breaths turn quieter and he succumbs to the exhaustion of the past hour, lying relatively still and pliant in Dean's arms.

When the ambulance arrives Dean lets them lead Castiel away, following them with the other EMT and taking a seat in the back of the truck with Castiel at his side, bloodied and half naked and practically catatonic. Alistair is wheeled down on a gurney and quickly put in a second ambulance, tubes are hanging from him and there's a lot of blood soaked into his clothes and on his skin.

The knife is still sticking out of his throat, and Dean gets a good look at it as he's wheeled past. He slowly lays an arm over Castiel's blanket covered shoulders.

"It's over..." he murmurs. Horror coating his words as he realises what Castiel had to do to get out of that room alive. "It's all ok now...it's all going to be ok..." he repeats softly, rubbing Castiel's back like he's a child. "I'm so sorry I couldn't get to you..." he feels his eyes grow wet, his voice shaking as the doors bang shut on them and the ambulance begins to move. "I'm so sorry...Cas..." Castiel's fingers touch his hand, drawing it into his lap. He looks like he wants to say something, but shakes his head, pressing close to Dean's body and hanging onto him tightly.

After a long time, about thirty minutes into the ride back to the hospital, Castiel licks his dry lips and open his cracked throat.

"I thought you were dead." He says numbly, blue eyes fixed on his lap, but hazy and unseeing.

Then the walls crash down and he grasps Dean tightly. Dean hold onto him right back and doesn't move until Castiel grips him tighter and pleads nonsensically, "Don't die." He just squeezes him back and promises, stupidly, that he won't.


	30. Chapter 30

_Ok...so this may now be longer than 30 chapters, but it's definitely wrapping up. I just had this thought and well...it's steering into port, let's put it that way. _

It doesn't take long for the harassed nurses to clear Dean for moving around the hospital. His head wound wasn't major and he'd been glaring and monosyllabic ever since he arrived, so desperate to get back to Castiel that he'd resorted to threats and brazen pleas with the steely eyed woman slowly sponging blood from his head.

He reaches Castiel's room and catches the doctor outside. Castiel looks so pale against the white sheets, the only colour on him comes from the livid lines scored into his bare chest and cheek. The rest is black and white, his eyes are closed.

Dean gets an update on him, latching dumbly onto the only things he can understand in the doctor's stream of placating jargon.

Castiel is going to be ok. He'd lost some blood. They were running tests. No sign of actual sex assault.

"Actual?" he swallows around the word, his throat still bruised from the wire.

"There was some..." the doctor is clearly struggling for a way to keep him calm. "Tearing, but we think that was probably pre-emptive. We don't think the assault was actualised."

Almost but not quite. Christ. Dean shrugs the doctor away and goes to sit on the hard chair in Castiel's hospital room. He looks across at the sleeping man, hooked up to drips of pain meds because of all the cuts on him, machines working quietly beside the bed.

He can't believe he let this happen.

He stays propped up in the chair, leaving after a few hours to find some coffee and leave a phone message for Michael, just in case the hospital had no luck there. He hears the nurses talking as he slides the receiver home numbly.

"...stuck right through his neck, like a fish hook, took three hours but..."

"...but he got it free, guy's still in the ICU but he might just make it..."

"...isn't he something to do with 13b? I heard he was some kind of..."

"...hard to believe though, he just looks so small, he can't have deserved that..."

"...they don't think he'll ever be able to speak again, can you believe someone did that to him?"

Dean walks through the halls like a ghost, numb and yet held by anger. The Intensive Care Unit is on the other side of the hospital and when he finds it he leans against the glass wall of the off limits area, looking in at the form of the man that had nearly raped his partner.

Alistair was swaddled in bandages and tubes, but still alive, still beeping away through the machines. Like the ultimate 'fuck you' to him and Castiel and God, that this man should still be here after all that, and not burning somewhere really far down under all the other fuckers like him. Like some cancer shaped like a man, supported by machines and the bustling nurses that also tended the poor unconscious form of his lover.

Alistair lived.

Dean swallowed the anger like blood.

By the time he's at Castiel's side again, the other man is awake, blinking his hazy blue eyes at the bright hospital room and waiting for Dean to come and see him.

"Hey." Dean manages, darting across the room to perch on the edge of the bed, touching the thin hand lying on the bed in its plastic hospital tag.

Castiel grips his fingers.

"You ok?" Dean shakes his head. "Dumb question...does it hurt so bad now?"

Castiel shakes his head in the negative.

"They're running tests." He says in his new voice, the croaking dead one that makes Dean's teeth set on edge.

"I know, baby, I know."

He watches Castiel blink confusedly, fighting the morphine in his system.

"The doctor says they need to test me..." a note of fear creeps into his voice. "He bled all over me."

Dean can see the panic rising in him and he can do nothing to stop him. Useless seems to be his position today.

"He bled all over me and they think...they said I might have something now...because he bled..." Dean presses his thumb to Castiel's lips, stopping the thought from circling again, like Castiel's caught in a loop and can't quite get out of it.

Tears slide noiselessly down Castiel's face. Dean holds his hand tighter.

"We'll be ok." Dean insists, with conviction he doesn't feel. "It'll be fine." He holds Castiel a little tighter, avoiding the cuts on him. "I saw Lisa today."

As he'd hoped, Castiel seizes on the distraction with both hands. He turns his eyes to Dean and listens to him talk about Lisa and Ben and how they're coming home at the end of the week, and how Lisa wants them both to visit her now that her Mom is down to help with the baby.

"I think Ben misses you." Dean says softly at the end of his story, he cards his fingers through the hair of the other man, now leaning against his chest.

He goes to sleep like that, drunk on pain meds, and Dean holds onto him until a nurse comes by and makes him get out of the bed.

He's heard it from the doctors, as Castiel has. Alistair has no medical records beyond age fifteen, they're testing both him and Castiel but, given that Alistair probably frequented other whores, that he indulged in the kind of blood fixation he's clearly carried with him for a while, and that he probably wasn't exactly sane...

There was a percentage somewhere, some meaningless statistic from the doctor, but Dean hadn't been paying attention to the words, just the creeping horror he was trying valiantly to deny.

HIV.

Waiting on a test that would tell him just how badly Alistair had hurt Castiel. Just how long he would have to carry him with him on his skin and in his blood.


	31. Chapter 31

_Well, that was really depressing, but then, a lot of people saw the Alistair thing coming. So my response was 'fine, plot-guessers – now take this as well' _

Sam doesn't so much visit Castiel as barrel into Dean by the coffee machine and yank him up into a hug. Dean had left a message on his brother's cell, on the heels of about ten messages apologising for the whole 'Hookergate' incident. It hadn't been the most diplomatic or restrained of voicemails. Something along the lines of, "Cas is in hospital, he got attacked and they think he might be infected with HIV" blunt and awkward as Dean paced the alley behind the ambulance bay.

Sam squeezes him tightly under the arms and smushes Dean's face into his chest. Gabriel hangs back a little, then approaches Dean's coffee and starts opening sugar packets, stirring several into the murky crap in the absence of anything else to contribute.

"Are you ok?" Sam pulls away enough to ask. "You sounded...well fuck, I mean you've never sounded like that and Gabe flew us back as soon as he could and...and do you know anything yet?" He asks hesitantly.

Dean shakes his head.

There isn't a whole lot left to say after that.

It's Sam that calls their parents, subverting the 'Hookergate' aftermath with news of the attack on Castiel, he tells them about the tests and hears his mother start to cry on the other end of the phone, sick with worry over both the recent disappearance of Sam himself, and now the tragedy that has befallen Dean and Castiel.

John takes the phone from her and asks to be put through to Dean. When Dean takes the cell phone from Sam he just hears his dad apologising, over and over, for the things he'd said to Castiel, to the things he'd accused him of.

Dean tells him it's ok, and then hands the phone back to Sam. It's hard to hate his dad for speculating that Castiel might have an infection or AID's, when right upstairs is the man who might have actually given it to him.

Michael arrives on Castiel's eighth day in hospital, the first day when Dean hasn't spent the night in the chair in Castiel's room, but in a motel nearby with Sam and Gabriel. He makes it to Castiel's room just in time to catch Michael looking in at his sleeping brother through the glass.

Michael doesn't acknowledge him with a greeting.

"I should have predicted this." He says instead, fingers gripping the sill below the glass pane. "I saw that man's eyes...heard how he was with my brother, And. I. Did. Nothing." He pushes away from the window and within seconds Dean is enveloped in the second heart-stoppingly tight hug he's endured in as many days. "When he told me what he did...this is what I worried would happen to him...that he wouldn't be safe...that he might get sick, or hurt or worse...and I wouldn't be there...I wasn't there..." Castiel's normally controlled brother releases Dean from his grasp and runs a shaking hand through his own hair. "I'm so glad for you, Dean." He looks at him with earnest eyes, so similar to Castiel's own. "If you hadn't been there..."

Neither of them wants to finish that thought.

So it was that all the different portions of Castiel's life, his family, Dean's family and his clientele, were represented there, like his hospital bed was the casket at some kind of perverse presidential funeral.

"Where's Lucifer?" Dean asked, once Michael had recovered himself. Castiel's other sibling must surely at least be aware of his brother's hospitalisation.

Michael shrugs.

"He's around, I think he went to fetch Castiel some food from the cafeteria." Michael looks hawkishly at Dean. "He came. I know you think our family is...strange...but Lucifer, for all his pride and rough edges...he loves Castiel, we both do." He cocks his head to one side. "And nobody blames you, not even Lucifer."

"I know." Dean sighs. "This is just...everything that's happened to us, and this is the worst thing yet...I thought he was going to die and now..." he gestures impotently. "He still might. This isn't some guy I can just...pull of him, this biology, screwing with us. And even when I could have done something...I didn't." He stuffs his hands into his pockets. "Everyone's acting like I did the best I could but...I should have done..."

"What?"

"More. He's mine and I should have taken better care of him...I should have..." He takes a long breath. "I just _should _have, ok?"

Michael lays a hand on his back, turning him towards the window, towards Castiel's sleeping form.

"When I found out about the tests they're doing? You know the first thing I thought...after what I was going to do to the bastard who did this?...at least he has you." He looks through the glass at his brother. "I don't really know you Dean but...all the things you're talking about? You never tried to run away from him, you never left...so this?...I'm hoping it won't be the straw that breaks the camel's back."

"I'm staying." Dean says immediately. Michael waits, wondering if Dean's going to wrestle with the idea and show his hand, but as he has in all else, Dean surprises him.

"I mean it, even if...if every time he cuts himself in the kitchen or...kisses me with an ulcer or if the goddamn condom breaks..." Michael winces. "and I have to worry? Fine. If I end up taking care of him my whole life? Who else is there, who else would I want to take care of?" Dean grits his teeth. "I may come from a family of assholes? But we're stubborn assholes and we take care of our own."

Michael watches him mildly. "You should send that out in Christmas cards." He says, but he smiles gratefully.

"I might." Dean says, then pushes open the door to Castiel's room.

Castiel has woken and sucked down two boxes of grape juice by the time Lucifer makes an appearance. He looks nothing like his brothers, bottle green eyes and blond hair to their blue and black colouring. He nods at Michael, then approaches Dean and holds out his hand, passing him a crumpled tissue.

"Can you throw this out for me? Thanks." He mutters, then sits on Castiel's bed and pats his hair, ignoring Dean entirely.

Dean clenches his fist over the tissue, but at Castiel's sleepy, pleading look, goes to find a bin.

He walks to the end of the corridor and stamps on the peddle of a hazardous materials bin, holding the tissue out before he notices how everyone is running in the opposite direction. Snatches of commotion make their way to him as people run past.

"...code in the ICU, guy suddenly..."

"...none of the nurses..."

"...technical fault, fucking hurry already!..."

The ICU.

He realises he's still holding the tissue, and how bulky the folds of it are, restlessly his fingers part the crumpled layers of paper, exposing a thin length of clear tube and a valve, innocuous in the paper covering.

"I hope that was important." Lucifer says from behind him. He saunters a little closer, hands in his suit pockets. "You never know with these things, just what will do the job." He gestures at the bin. "You should probably get rid of it."

Dean drops the handful of paper and the piece of tubing into the bin, closing the lid with a snap.

"Take care of my brother." Lucifer advises, with all the blank calm of a sociopath. "You're better for him than me and Mike, that's for damn sure."

Dean's kind of getting that.

"Wouldn't do for you to be taken away...not for someone like that..." his nose wrinkles delicately. "deviant. So much easier to have it dealt with neatly, don't you think? Though less satisfying for you."

"He's Dead. Don't care how as long as I get to stay with Cas." Dean keeps his voice level, rising to the challenge in Lucifer's voice.

The other man mulls it over.

"Good answer." He strolls away, towards the lobby and the exit. "See you next reunion." He waves over his shoulder.

Dean returns to the room, wondering if there are any truly normal people left in his life.


	32. Chapter 32

_Try as I might, this is as little chick-lity girly nonsense as I could include. Blame endorphins. _

Negative.

Negative has never been such a good word to hear, and he's heard it a lot. He was called negative at school, and when he first voiced the idea to Sam that Lisa might be cheating on him, when he'd told Castiel that Lisa's baby would probably be born Chinese, just as an extra kick in the teeth...

He can joke again.

Because, just like him, Castiel is negative.

Sure, Alistair is negative too, but he's also...well, Dean feels a stab of guilt at being so light about the other man's death, even though a couple of days ago he'd wanted to choke the life from him himself. But he remembers Castiel crying in the ambulance, and again when he'd been warned that he could have a life ruining infection, and the heavily dressed wound in his hip from Alistair's knife. The scars that would never heal.

So, Alistair is both negative and dead. He'll find that funny if he wants.

When Castiel hears the news he closes his eyes and lets out the longest sigh that Dean has ever heard. Michael grasps his brother's hand and bows his head over it in thanks, Dean, perched on the side of Castiel's bed, kisses the top of his head and fights the stupidly sudden urge to cry.

Just this once, everything works out ok.

He stumbles on Gabriel and Sam on the steps to the entrance of the hospital, wandering outside to call his parents and tell them the news. He sees Gabriel gesturing widely with his hands, a pleading expression on his face, and Sam buckles, wrapping his arms around the smaller man and almost lifting him as he holds him tightly. Gabriel would have spotted Dean, but his eyes are screwed shut, face pressed to the curve of Sam's neck.

One day Dean will have to find out what Gabriel said to him.

He creeps around the corner of the building and calls his parents, his Dad picks up and responds to the amazing news of 'negative' with gruff happiness on Dean's behalf. There's a long pause and then,

"You should bring him back up here...get him out of the city and let him rest up. Your mom'd be happy to cook for someone, 'specially if he's just coming off of that hospital crap."

"Sure...I'll get back to you." Dean says, wonderingly.

"Yeah...you should...and maybe..." John sighs like the wind has finally left his sails. "Maybe get Sam to bring this little person along...make it a...thing." he finishes lamely.

Dean may not be the most worldly guy, but he recognises an olive branch when he sees one.

"Sure, I'll ask Sam about it later." He shuffles the dirt with his toe. "Give my love to mom."

"Will do." And John dashes from the conversation like his ass is on fire. Dean slips the phone back into his pocket.

He pauses, then takes it out again and dials from memory.

"Hey...Lis?" he drums his fingers on his thigh. "I've got some news about Castiel..."

It's really rather weird, Dean can't help thinking, that _nothing _happening, could affect such change. Because even though he and Castiel had been hurt, Cas far more so than him. They had survived, there was no lasting damage...and yet everything was different.

Sam and Gabriel were back together, his Dad had apparently had an attitude transplant, Lisa and he were on speaking terms again...and he knew, stronger than ever, how he felt about Castiel.

After Lucifer's speech, if you could call it that, about how he was better for Castiel than Michael or Lucifer himself, Dean had done some thinking. Pacing the hospital and the surrounding parking lot and tiny memorial park, he'd thought about the tests that were being done on Castiel. He'd thought about Michael and the promises he'd made to Castiel's brother about sticking it out, even if the worst happened.

And now...negative...and it hadn't changed a goddamn thing.

When Michael leaves Castiel's room, and Dean returns from his extensive phone calls to friends and family, he settles down at Castiel's side.

"How are you feeling?"

Castiel smiles slightly.

"Like I got the eleventh hour reprieve." He sighs. "I thought...I was thinking about taking anti-viral meds my whole life and...maybe not living that long even with that...risking you...and...now it's just gone. Or, it was never there...but you know what I mean." He touches Dean's hand. "I can't imagine what this was like for you."

"Sure you can, just cut how terrible you felt by about half and add a whole load of other crap...I thought I was going to lose you." He frowns. "Seems like that happened a lot, I thought Alistair had hurt you so badly...and then this...but you're sticking around. Good to know." He sucks in a breath. "Cas?"

"Mmmmm?" Castiel looks up from where he's been toying with Dean's fingers.

"Can I...I mean, the whole reason we were going to your place...the moving in thing?"

"Too much?" Castiel guesses. "I realise with everything that happened...maybe it would have occurred to us sooner...maybe we should stay as we were? Just until everything makes sense again. Until we figure out how this would work when everything's...normal, boring." He laughs shakily. "God I miss boring...just average life...never thought I'd look back on being an escort as the simple life." He holds Dean a little tighter. "But whatever you need, really...I'm just happy to be alive so...anything else is just fine by..."

"Marry me." Dean blurts.

Castiel blinks.

"What did I just say?" he grouses. "Normal. Boring. Life." He frowns at Dean, "are you trying to kill me?"

"Sorry." Dean scrunches up in his seat. "Wasn't thinking...stupid idea, forget it."

"Yes it's stupid...I just got the all clear and we got attacked and my apartment got turned over and now..." he shakes his head. "Now, I have to find a dress."

Dean perks up. "Seriously?"

"Possibly the pain medication." Castiel grasps his shoulder tightly. "But...I don't want to lose you...I don't want to pretend that we have all the time in the world because...we're not lucky, and I don't want to miss out on you, or us." Dean hugs him as hard as he's able without hurting the smaller man. "And..." Castiel manages, from underneath the weight of Dean's body on his. "and...I was thinking, about what happened at my apartment, about how it felt being..." he pauses and Dean knows that there will probably always be a pause there, that, happy as they are, and as they will be, there will always be scars through them, invisible boundaries and wrinkles in their shared life.

"I want to see Ben." Castiel says.

"Seriously?" Dean tries to keep the surprise from his voice.

"I thought...he's my son, my only son...and I want to watch him grow up. I want to ask Lisa if we can see him, regularly."

"My advice? Do it before the hormones wear off." Dean mutters, but he's smiling. Happy.

Castiel is alive, Castiel wants to see his son. Castiel wants to marry him.

It's like suddenly being handed everything he wants, everything, and realising how close he'd come to losing out. How much he stood to lose and yet had retained in the face of all the forces working against them.

Castiel watches him for a moment.

"What are you thinking about"? he asks, and it's such a ridiculously girly question, it's Castiel, back to his regular self and not running a repeat track of despair and pain.

"You realise if I hadn't taken Lisa's phone...none of this would have happened. I'd still be married, and you'd be working as usual. Instead..."

"We're going to be married." Castiel points out, "and one of us should probably get a job."

"Buzz kill." Dean flicks his leg.

" 'S what I'm here for." Castiel sighs, poking him back.


	33. Chapter 33

_There are so many issues to deal with following the attack and everything else, that I would be writing till judgement day, and everyone would get bored. With that in mind, here is the very last (absolutely the last, lest I be spanked until my bottom turns purple) chapter – I'd like to think it isn't rushed, but more of a montage...anyway, you have all been wonderful, this was meant to be like, six chapters long and I hope the ending is what you all wanted...or most of you anyway. _

Life, as it turns out, is a lot like God. It giveth and it taketh away.

They get their perfect moment, Castiel recently pronounced infection free, a ring less marriage proposal and their families falling in line with their rhythm, falling in love with _them _as a unit.

Dean holds on to that moment, even years later, because it was perfect.

Castiel gets released from hospital and they have their bad couple of weeks. Castiel can't sleep, his hip is still healing, and he has nightmares most nights.

There are months where he skirts the subject of sex, until Castiel sits him down and forces his way through layers of repression to talk about what Alistair did, it's hard for him to say, and kind of makes Dean want to kill Alistair over again. But they get through it and it becomes just another grain of sand between them, interrupting their once perfect slide together.

Then comes the moment when Dean realises they have to go back to Castiel's apartment, clear out the rest of the debris and rescue anything that's left.

Castiel makes a choice, and tells Dean to burn anything that's left in the apartment.

He doesn't go back to his old place, because stupid as it sounds, he thinks maybe James dies there, and he isn't sure how he'd feel, going back.

Dean doesn't press the issue.

Even though the building attendant had cleared most of the place and stuck a new door in place of the old one, there was still enough damage to remind Dean of what had happened. The mattress was gone, but there were a few stubborn blood stains on the floor, the walls were plastered and painted anew, but he could see the faint dents where Alistair had broken the old walls with his fists.

He drags everything out to the kerb with Sam and Gabriel's help. Then he goes back to his own home and finds Castiel , curled in the very middle of their bed, eyes so red and throat sore from sobbing since Dean had left him.

That's when he realises that this is the first time he'd left Castiel alone since he came out of hospital.

He remembers that moment because it broke his heart.

There's therapy after that, for both himself and Castiel. They talk about what happened, about the future and their past and everything that comes to mind. Eventually Castiel gets used to being left alone again, but it takes time, anxiety attacks and frantic calls to get there.

A year after the attack, Castiel twists in his arms, turning over in bed and kissing him like he's just remembered how.

Dean kisses him back.

Afterwards, in the slight afterglow, naked and still joined and sweating. Dean wonders what happened to the Castiel and Dean that they used to be, the guy going through his divorce and the strange hooker.

They've come a long way, or they haven't moved at all – he can't figure out which it is.

As with all dark times, things begin to get better. By Ben's second birthday they're mostly normal, mostly back together the way they once were. Castiel is happy with him and they take a picture in Lisa's back yard (which at some point stopped being his and Lisa's old back yard, even in his head) Dean and Castiel and Lisa (holding Ben) beside a blue cake shaped like a bunny.

Castiel frames it in a new frame, bought from IKEA, and puts it on the wall above their bed. It's only the second new thing he'd bought to replace the things he lost at his apartment. The first being new clothes.

After publishing delays, and a whole new third act being added at the eleventh hour, Castiel's book is finally put into print. It tells the story of Castiel's family, his move to the city, his work before he become an escort and after. Meeting Dean (dubbed Edward in honour of Pretty Woman, a film Castiel loves despite himself) falling in love, every obstacle that fell into their path...then Alistair, the hospital, Ben and their marriage – three years after the attack.

It is not an international hit. But it pays the bills and a while after its release, some producers approach Gabriel (now Gabriel Winchester –Garrison) with an offer of making it into a mini-series.

He holds out for a movie – and gets one a year later.

_Angel – _starring Thomas Dekker as 'Chris' and Adam Baldwin as 'Edward' hits cinemas in the fall of that year and receives mixed reviews.

Lucifer calls it a masterpiece.

Michael wants the two hours of his life back.

Dean's parents tactfully decline tickets, because in John's words 'What I don't know won't give me an aneurism.'

Lisa enjoys Morena Baccarin's performance as Edward's wife, as Dean knew she would.

Sam finds it hilarious that Adam Tudyk played Gabriel.

Gabriel points out that there was some pretty lazy casting going on, as 80% of the cast seem to be from Firefly.

Castiel and Dean watch it on their new couch (a product of Cas's IKEA fixation) in their new home.

They agree that it's a terrible movie.

Though the soundtrack was excellent.


End file.
